Businesses are wealth creators and key to improving the whole of society, says former UK trade and investment minister Lord Digby Jones.

Internationally-revered business advocate Jones spoke of his ambition for business and the global challenges they face to a packed CCI breakfast at the Parmelia Hilton on July 26.

He covered controversial topics like Brexit and Donald Trump, and urged governments and politicians to support businesses in helping people left behind by globalisation – rather than attack them to score votes.

“You’ve got to add value in your life and if you don’t in this globalised economy then you’re over,” he says.

“The only hope you then think you have is the extremes of politics because they (politicians) are the only people who lie to you and tell you they’re on your side.

“The real true way for those poor people, poor materially and poor socially and spiritually, the way to deal with it is educate them, skill them.

“Business has got to reach out down and under those who can’t. We need to help lift them to a place they can and that is businesses true role, that’s what I mean by social inclusion and wealth creation walking together.”

“Business can be this amazing agent for quality social change but the political class have to come with it.”

Jones also pumped up the role of organisations like CCIWA and says they’re important in advocating the positive role business plays in the community.

He also regaled attendees with a story about his great uncle Thomas Edington who moved to Perth in 1910 to build the Fremantle to Geraldton Railway.

Edington died in 1917 fighting in France and his story inspired Jones to start the Thomas Edington scholarship at UWA.