Tory Chelsea and Fulham candidate Greg Hands saddled up on a Harley Davidson motorbike today while campaigning for the support of local businesses.


The prospective MP dropped into Warr's in Fulham, a family business which has been building and selling the classic bikes for more than 80 years, to talk to owner John Warr about Conservative aims for the economy.


Mr Hands, whose is fighting for the  new seat after representing Hammersmith and Fulham, said Warr's encapsulates the spirit of entrepreneurship which the Tories hope to bring back.


It was founded on a site nearby in 1924, by John Warr's grandfather, Captain Frederick James Warr, and has grown to become the most successful Harley Davidson dealership in the UK, with hundreds of bikes sold each year.


Mr Hands said: "Warr's is very important because Fulham needs thriving businesses. This has been here for 80 years, and it's a brilliant family run business which is doing a great job with exports as well, which is very important for our economy."


He said the Tories would help businesses like Warr's by preventing Labour's planned one per cent rise in National Insurance, by introducing a new 'fair fuel' tax which falls and rises with the price of oil, and by encouraging more industry.


Mr Hands added: "We need to help recreate Britain's enterprise culture, which has been damaged a lot in the past decade, and get Britain exporting again and manufacturing again. We became too reliant on things like financial services and property, and we need to do what we can to rediversify the economy."


Mr Warr said his firm had not been hit too badly by the recession, partly because of an influx of European customers attracted by the strong Euro, but said the National Insurance rise would hit his business.


He said: "It's another tax on jobs, and we have enough of a problem as a specialist industry in a location in which it's expensive for people to live.
"I'm against anything that makes it more expensive, creates another overhead that has to be passed on to the customer and makes us less competitive."


Gordon Brown has said the Conservatives' aim to avoid a National Insurance Rise by cutting more waste in government is unrealistic and unaffordable.