A top Tory, renowned for her love of fancy footwear, was presented with a pair of pink work boots when she visited local electronic waste recycling company, SWEEEP.

 

Theresa May MP, who is the Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and Shadow Minister for Women, visited SWEEEP during a recent tour of Sittingbourne which was arranged by local Conservative Parliamentary Candidate, Gordon Henderson.

 

Mrs May, who is famously known for taking the stage at a Conservative Party Conference wearing kitten heel boots, was presented with the reinforced work boots by SWEEEP bosses, Patrick and Pam Watts.

 

Gordon Henderson explained that Mrs May was in the constituency as part of his campaign to highlight the important role that local companies will play in increasing employment as the country emerges from recession.

 

Mr Henderson said:

 

“Theresa was delighted with the work boots and took the continued reference to her fancy footwear with good humour. But there was a more serious reason for her tour of Sittingbourne I particularly wanted Theresa to visit SWEEEP because despite all the economic doom and gloom this is a local company that has succeeded since it was set up two years ago.

 

“SWEEEP is exactly the type of company that will lead Britain out of recession. It is private enterprise that will create long lasting wealth creating jobs, not the State. It is private enterprise that will ensure Britain’s future prosperity, not the Government.

 

“Of course the Government has a role to play, because our small and medium companies will only succeed with help from ministers who should be doing more to encourage banks, many of which are now effectively state-owned, to provide the loans those companies need to grow their business.

 

“David Cameron proposed a National Loan Guarantee Scheme to help get credit flowing to local businesses, but sadly the Government refused to accept his advice. The Government’s own scheme is simply not getting money where it is needed; to our grass-roots small and medium businesses. ”

 

This recession was caused by a credit crunch. So the priority has to be to get the credit markets moving. As a temporary measure to help businesses as the country come out of recession, the Conservatives have been calling for a National Loan Guarantee Scheme to help get credit flowing.

 

• We proposed establishing a temporary new Government body - the National Loan Guarantee Scheme - to underwrite lending from the banks to British businesses.  The focus would have been on short-term credit lines, overdrafts and trade credit - the lifelines that all businesses need to stay afloat.

 

• The National Loan Guarantee Scheme would have guaranteed billions of pounds of new loans to UK businesses, and it would have done so for a commercial insurance fee, passed on by the banks, that would properly protect the taxpayer.  The guarantee would not cover 100 per cent of the loan, since it is important that banks take a share of the risk to prevent reckless lending.  And it would have been the banks, not the Government, that would make decisions about which companies to lend to.