I lobbied my party for years to have Conservative conferences brought to Manchester. Not only does it bring valuable business here, but more importantly, party conferences are a wonderful ‘shop window’ showing the thousands of media and business people who attend, what a great city this is. I’ve been going to party conferences for about 30 years so I’m no stranger to protests, but this year I was embarrassed. Visitors to the conference, both old and young, including, apparently, a group of girl guides – were harassed, jostled, verbally abused, spat at and pelted with missiles by the ‘protestors’ outside the venue. We were all shouted at: as someone born in Salford and raised in Timperley, I did not take kindly to being told to: ‘Go Home!’ by a bunch of Home Counties Trots. Another yelled instruction from the protestors was: ‘Get back to Eton!’ you can imagine how irritating that was to a grammar school boy who spends his life campaigning for the best in state education. The serious point relates to policing. Some of the protestors wore masks or balaclavas. No-one was sure what they had in mind and there was real concern, especially as the police seemed to be holding back and allowing them very close to the people trying to enter the conference centre. I spoke to police officers on duty who agreed with me that the intimidation was unacceptable but said they were constrained by their operational instructions. I took it up with the Police and Crime Commissioner, Tony Lloyd who told me that the police had the all the powers necessary, but promised to look into it. I hope that lessons will be learnt from this episode. We cannot allow a few thugs to stop young people in particular from getting involved in politics, nor do we want them to stop businesses from investing here. The right to protest is important but so too is the right to engage in our national democracy without fear or intimidation.