The Minister for Small Business aka the 'Come-back Kid'

In our final piece on Nigel Griffiths, the Small Business Minister, we look at the Minister himself and his attitudes and past experiences leading up to being assigned to the post.

Mr Griffiths has been the Labour MP for Edinburgh South since June 1987. The 46-year-old MP has been a member of the Labour Party since he was 15 and was a councillor in Edinburgh for seven years during the 1980s. He studied at Edinburgh University, obtaining an MA in 1977 and continuing his studies at the Moray House College of Education in 1978.

He championed consumer causes as a junior Minister with responsibility for consumer affairs under Margaret Beckett, then under Secretary of State at the DTI, until he was sacked from the Department in the 1998 Cabinet reshuffle following a series of events over his private business interests.

His return to Government, and the Department of Trade and Industry, after the last election earned Mr Griffiths the nickname the 'Come-back Kid.' He was given the post of 'Minister for small business, export control, and arms non-proliferation.'

UKTECH asked Mr Griffiths what it was like to go from looking after the consumer brief to looking after the small businesses that provide goods to consumers and the polar opposite perspective of consumer/business representation.

"I've always had 360 degree vision" - Nigel Griffiths

Mr Griffiths replied: "I've always had 360 degree vision. I've always thought that businesses in the UK were good, because they've always had the consumer in mind. I've seen supermarkets move from where I used to criticise them fifteen years ago for putting smaller shops out of business, to transforming the range and prices of products to millions of people.

"It also helped me to appreciate that many of our small businesses are successful because of the personal relationships they have with their clients. I also warmly welcome the recent report about the changing treatment of small businesses by banks. I lobbied the Office of Fair Trading to try to get small businesses included in the Consumer Credit Act which they were not, as it was often the case that a self-employed person became the same sort of bank charge victim as charities and everyone else in that small operations sector."

UKTECH: Have you ever been involved in running a small business yourself?

Mr Griffiths: "No."

UKTECH: What do you do when you're not being the Minister for Small Business?

Mr Griffiths: "I'm keeping up my flying lessons, and I recently had a helicopter-flying lesson from an Editor of a magazine that interviewed me recently. My two most practiced hobbies are reading and listening to music. I recently bought the latest iPod MP3 player, which is totally unbelievable, and I've got Mozart next to Meatloaf stored on it with about 140 other albums. It's the best gizmo I've bought since the big pen! My physical hobbies are hill walking, climbing and scuba diving."

UKTECH: What are you reading at the moment?

Mr Griffiths: "'In Siberia' by Colin Toubro, and his whole back catalogue, the guy's amazing. He's based in central London so I'm going to ring him up to see if he'll come in and have lunch with me."

Mr Griffiths is also a member of a number of organisations, including Amnesty International, Friends of the Earth, and the Ramblers' Association. He also helped found the Big Issue in Scotland, the magazine sold by homeless people.