HOWZAT

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But he has accepted the CBI presidency with a keenness. He moved into the chairman’s London office at Centrepoint off Oxford Street before his appointment date. He is keen to advance the voice of business and engage in dialogue with the Government, about which he has strong views.

Mr Broughton, a trained accountant, had a long career at British American Tobacco (BAT), where he started as an auditor before moving up to finance director, chief executive and chairman before leaving in 2004. At BAT he established a reputation for being forthright — a characteristic on display at the CBI conference.

He worked his way to the top from a working-class family in Fulham. He did not go to university and his father warned him off accountancy in case he failed. He likes racing and football in equal measure.

At BAT he earned the soubriquet “eyebrows” when colleagues realised that, if they were raised, he was seriously concerned about something.

At the tobacco company he was outspoken in saying that the Government should not restrict people’s liberty to smoke. Yet Mr Broughton, a non-smoker except for the occasional after-dinner cigar, also famously admitted that he would have advised his son and daughter not to smoke had they shown any inclination to do so.

At the CBI Mr Broughton’s forthrightness is focused largely on the Government. He is concerned that Britain is slipping down the league of international competitiveness as other countries offer more attractive tax and regulation regimes. He says: “The national debate has moved very much from how we attract new business to the UK to how we prevent existing business from leaving. That is a sign of the fact that we are less competitive now than we used to be.”

He and the CBI were encouraged by the Government’s pledge in the Pre-Budget Report to reduce regulation by 25 per cent, although Mr Broughton felt that the promise had a familiar ring to it: “It was a great response, if we see it delivered. We have had what seems like endless responses about less regulation, deregulation, etc, and then two or three months later we have another response because nothing has been delivered.”

His wish list beyond regulation and improved competitiveness is considerable. He would like a snap election after the Labour leadership change, so that Gordon Brown or the Conservative Party would have a clear mandate that would give business certainty about policy. He doesn’t mind if the Department of Trade and Industry is scrapped, as rumours of its demise under a Brown leadership continue. “For the things that the DTI is supposed to do, so long as someone is doing them and they are done well it doesn’t matter where they are done.”

He believes that the DTI has failed small businesses because they find the myriad of support schemes and their administration perplexing.

Mr Broughton would also like an overhaul of how government operates so that secretaries of state and ministers are not necessarily political appointments drawn from what he sees as a narrow talent pool of MPs. Instead, he would like to see more appropriately qualified outsiders brought in to run government departments. “America frequently goes outside government. We don’t do that and we miss an opportunity. We restrict ourselves to a small number of people who almost by definition are unqualified to do the job.”

It would be a form of meritocracy that need not derail democracy, he believes, because he thinks that democracy comes in the parliamentary process rather than in the execution of government functions.

Yet Mr Broughton readily acknowledges that he is unlikely to see many of these sweeping changes. Then again, he may also be hoping that Mr Brown lives up to his reputation for delivering political surprises — and what could be more surprising than a snap election, a radical restructuring of government and the abolition of the DTI?

Minding its business

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