Karen Shuter, chair of the Coventry and Warwickshire Chamber of Commerce’s Rugby Local Business Forum, says firms across the region are ready to work with John Slinger.

Firstly, I’d like to say many congratulations to John Slinger on becoming the new MP for Rugby.

His victory reflected a very dramatic national swing towards Labour that has seen the party return to office for the first time in nearly 15 years.

The new Government has put economic growth at the heart of its agenda. It campaigned hard on this issue and it has continued with that message in its earliest announcements and, indeed, in the King’s Speech.

We, as businesses, are very pleased to see this approach but, equally, we don’t want the Government to do everything for us – we simply want conditions that provide the foundations for a growing economy and we want a dose of long-term thinking and stability.

As I have said previously, we wish former MP Mark Pawsey all the very best for the future after he decided to stand down before the July election. He has been a big supporter of business and has been a regular attendee at our Local Business Forum where he has always brought us up to speed with developments in Westminster and listened to the concerns of firms across the borough.

We are, of course, very keen to engage with John Slinger in the coming weeks and months so that businesses here can feed into the very pro-growth agenda the Government is pursuing.

One of the key barriers to growth that was raised in the run-up to the election was skills and how we develop our workforce for the future.

I attended the Logistics Industry Future Skills roundtable just after the election with Warwickshire County Council and Rugby Borough Council to discuss this very topic.

Logistics is close to my heart as it is what I do in my day job and it’s of huge significance to the region.

Ultimately, there is some work to be done within the sector on changing the perception of logistics and the roles that are on offer within it. It’s now a high-tech industry and many of the skills we are going to need into the future will be around IT and AI.

This is the case for many other sectors and it’s why ensuring we have the right skills for the future is going to be so important for our economy and to achieve the growth we all want to see.

I am sure it will be one of the topics of conversation at our next Rugby Local Business Forum at the Draycote Hotel. If you wish to find out more or attend the event in September, please get in touch with the Chamber’s head of policy, Sean Rose, at [email protected]