Lord Digby Jones
Digby Jones was born into business. Some of his earliest memories are of life in a busy corner shop where he lived with his mother and father and older sister. The shop was, he says, "within a spanner throw of the Austin" in Alvechurch just outside Birmingham. He remembers fondly pressing his nose against the shop window watching the new Minis leave the factory destined for showrooms across the UK and the world. It was here he learnt the first rudiments of business - important values that were never to leave him.
He discovered the importance of good customer care at an early age and the concept of profit and loss, the very essence of good business management became an everyday reality for the young boy. And when, in the mid-sixties, the supermarkets began to move to the area, he also learned about the vulnerability of business.

At the age of 10 his parents sold the shop and his father became a full-time student, living off a grant, before he finally qualified as a Probation Officer. His mother worked as an Assistant Physiotherapist at the local hospital. It was at this period of his life when Digby first became aware of two very different aspects of the public sector.