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They think it's all over ... it is now ...

They say that a week is a long time in politics; certainly a month is a long time in the production of our Business Bulletin.

At the time of writing, the election campaign is just swinging into action; Gordon Brown faced the young pretenders in the first televised leaders’ debate last night and this morning five of our local parliamentary candidates held their own debate at the Chamber’s Hustings Business Breakfast – at the time of reading the campaigning banners will have been put away for another term and we’ll all know whose name will go on the letter box at No 10.

But while the campaign may have gone away; the issues won’t have and all those promises that the successful candidates made over the last month or so now have to be followed through.

This Chamber highlighted the key issues outlined by the business community in our Election Manifesto and although like other pre-election publications, the document itself had a limited shelf life, the contents are very much alive.

So having cleared the first hurdle – that of actually getting elected - our new MPs will now have to move ahead to show us how they will address the issues highlighted by ourselves at local level and by the Scottish and British Chambers of Commerce at national level.

As a reminder, our issues were listed under three main headings:

Rebuilding Britain’s Business Infrastructure, Delivering Jobs through Local Enterprise and Global Trade and Breaking Down Barriers for Growth.

As part of that we will be looking for government action which will help anchor and support the oil & gas industry – an industry which contributed 28% of total UK corporate tax in 2008-2009, making it a major national industry; one which cannot be taken for granted which must have the incentives and initiatives to convince it to stay headquartered here.

Investment in our infrastructure – particularly our transport infrastructure remains a priority and one which is particularly close to this Chamber’s heart. Effective and reliable connectivity is an essential element of ensuring the area’s economic competitiveness by making the movement of goods and people more efficient and reliable.

We also highlighted a need for government measures to support business start up and development and the importance of introducing growth incentives; we particularly drew attention to the need to improve opportunities for partnership working between education and business; we asked government to develop initiatives which will help companies who want to grow their businesses by moving into international trade through the introduction of support programmes which will equip them with the skills and knowledge they need.

Other points we raised included:

A requirement for improved digital connectivity, particularly in the North-east

The ongoing necessity to improve access to finance

A need to reappraise the regulations which threaten to throttle business expansion, in particular an urgent review of some of the estimated £25.8 billion of new regulation costs which are in the pipeline for 2010-2014

Cancellation of the proposed rise in national insurance contributions

Fairer funding for our local authorities

Support for the development of renewable energy

Government support for the ACSEF agenda

Campaigning for an election . . .

They may think it’s all over . . . it’s only just begun