Enterprise Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town and Lord Low of Dalston

Wednesday 4th November 2015 Grand Committee

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, I apologise on behalf of my noble friend Lord Wills for his absence, which was completely unavoidable. On behalf of him, the noble Lord, Lord Low, and myself, I shall move Amendment 54. It is a simple amendment and I think that the case is fairly clear. The public, consumers, other workers and, indeed, very often the Government need whistleblowers if the public sector is to perform to the standards that we all expect of it in serving the community, protecting both its clients and employees and indeed ensuring that we as taxpayers get value for money from every part of the public service. Uncovering mismanagement or fraud, risks to vulnerable people or poor governance—all these sorts of things are in the public interest. Those who see things from the inside that quite rightly need to be known outside their coterie must be encouraged to whistleblow, but safe in the knowledge that they will have proper protections.

In supporting the amendment, the Association of Educational Psychologists, to give but one example, considers it vital to exempt whistleblowers from the cap. To quote the association:

“If one’s whole career is to be risked then an exit payment limited to £95,000 or less might act as a deterrent resulting in less whistleblowing”.

That would be a loss to all of us. I trust therefore that the Minister will accommodate this exemption, if not today then by bringing something forward herself on Report. I beg to move.

[Lord Low of Dalston (CB)]

My Lords, I put my name to these amendments and I am very happy to support them, but I confess that the forces in their support are in some disarray today. We have already heard about the unavoidable absence of the noble Lord, Lord Wills—prevented from attending by a rival speaking engagement to which he was committed. I myself am less fully briefed and more underpowered than I would wish, having literally stepped off a plane this morning from the United States to find that the amendments were coming up today. I had been expecting them on Monday; indeed, for some time this afternoon it seemed as though they would not be reached until Monday, such was the Grand Committee’s rate of progress, but here we are. I am most grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, for riding to the rescue and moving the amendment.

The concern is basically that those settling claims where they might have got unlimited damages had they gone to tribunal will be disproportionately prejudiced if the amount at which a claim may be settled is capped. This is certainly the case with claims under PIDA, the Public Interest Disclosure Act, but it may just as much be the case with discrimination cases. The Minister might care to comment on that, as we may wish to take it up on Report. A second concern is that capping settlements where there is no limit on the level of damages that may be obtained at tribunal can operate only as an incentive to go to tribunal—to go to litigation rather than settle.

The noble Baroness spoke to the amendments very ably and, given the hour, I do not think I need say anything more about them, save that I fully support them.

Enterprise Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town and Lord Low of Dalston

Wednesday 28th October 2015 Grand Committee

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, having been given the lead-in, I will rise to speak at this point, and I do so very much from the point of view of the consumer. In the helpful note that was sent to me and, I am sure, to others by the Minister on 27 October, she rightly stresses that the list is not definitive and the views of business, regulators and other respondents will inform the legislation. Something that always worries me, of course, is that business and regulators have whole departments that are able to respond on this while the consumer—or, as I will come to it, the patient—never does. They do not know about these things and therefore we have a particular duty to think about that.

As my noble friend Lord Stevenson has said, the first list sets out the statutory bodies that are under consideration for being brought into scope. I find the inclusion of the Charity Commission difficult to understand. It is to protect the use of charitable money and make sure that it is spent on charitable aims and objectives. It is not to further the interests of business, to make business more efficient or to help growth. It is a protection, particularly for people who donate to charities, to ensure that their money is used correctly, so I find it slightly surprising that the commission is in there. Again, though, I worry about how the sort of people who donate to charities would ever get their views heard if there was a risk that that regulator had in some way to take more account of the interests of businesses that may have a charitable arm than those of individual donors.

There are two others on the list that I worry about for similar reasons. One is the Information Commissioner and the other is the Pensions Regulator. I used to sit on the determinations panel of the Pensions Regulator, but I no longer have that interest to declare. They are both protectors of the interests of groups of the public. The Information Commissioner is in a way quasijudicial because it is looking at whether a company has perhaps misused its mailing lists or, in the case of a bank, its bank details. It would worry me a lot if it was the bank that was giving evidence about whether the regulation of its data by the Information Commissioner was too intrusive while the views of people like us with bank accounts or any other data—our shopping experience with a big retailer or whatever it might be—will not have our views heard when this is looked at. I have concerns about a body like the Information Commissioner that is there to protect the public.

I have similar concerns about the Pensions Regulator, which is also in a sense quasijudicial. Certainly, the sort of cases that I used to hear were dealt with in a court. The regulator is there to protect pensions very often where a company may be in difficulties and there are really difficult issues to be dealt with around its pension scheme. The regulator is there to protect the pensions and to look after those interests. If that regulator is told that it must look at the business interests rather than those of the pensioners, that would worry me. Again, I do not know how would-be pensioners, who have no idea about this or that they may be in a scheme which the Pensions Regulator is looking at, will be heard.

Lastly, although they come under the second sub-heading “Regulators for further discussion”, are the bodies regulated by the Professional Standards Authority for Health and Social Care, which is what I think we used to call the professions allied to medicine, and now with social work included. Again, this is about setting standards to protect patients—which is what they will usually be, although sometimes in social care they will be clients rather than patients. A big care agency may say, “Look, this regulation is a bit hard on us”, but these standards are there to protect us as patients, as people being looked after in care homes or as whatever—the Committee is fairly familiar with the areas that this covers.

These provisions are very much there to protect users, consumers, patients, residents of care homes and anyone who has information held by a big retailer or company, and I hope that the Government can offer a little more justification as to why the regulator will be perhaps nudged to look towards growth and the business aspect rather than the interests of the consumer and the public.

[Lord Low of Dalston (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak very briefly to support the exclusion of the Equality and Human Rights Commission. The noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, has gone through the argument and laid out the case for this exclusion very fully so I will not go over that again, but I want to add one point. Far from imposing extra burdens on business, the Equality and Human Rights Commission does quite a lot to relieve business of burdens by producing things such as guidance and codes of practice that explain the position and help to guide business through the legal maze of discrimination law, making it a good deal easier for business to deal with these issues when they come up. It does not seem appropriate, when that is the function of the Equality and Human Rights Commission and the way that it works, to tie the commission up in the sort of red tape that its work—its codes of practice and guidance and so on—goes quite a long way to ridding business of.

Welfare Reform Bill

Debate between Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town and Lord Low of Dalston

Monday 14th November 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Low of Dalston]

My Lords, my name is on the amendment. I will very briefly make clear my support for it. Most of the things that I intended to say have been said, but I will underscore them. My first point is very much the same as that of the noble Lord, Lord Newton. The proposal to eliminate the lowest rate of DLA care when introducing the daily living component of PIP at only two levels is one of the principal causes of the fear and apprehension on the part of disabled people that we talked about when discussing the earlier amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell. As we heard, we are not talking about a small number of people but 652,000, or nearly three-quarters of a million. That is a substantial consideration of which the Government should be mindful.

My other point, which I do not think anybody has made, is that the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, allows the Government room in regulations to reduce the number of disabled people receiving the lowest rate of the care component while still ensuring that some of those who currently access this level of help will not be cut adrift at a stroke from support when the new benefit is introduced. Now I come to think of it, this point is the same as that made by the noble Lord, Lord Newton; it is about transition and flexibility. If the Government, for cost considerations or for any other reason, feel it imperative to push ahead in this direction, I urge them to give serious thought to the question of phasing out and showing flexibility on the precise number who will be cut adrift from the benefit at a stroke. If we need to lose some people, perhaps consideration can be given to articulating the benefit in such a way that not all 652,000 people are affected at once.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, I hope that by means of the Minister’s response to the amendments we will come to understand the Government’s thinking on why and how they will move from three levels of disability living allowance to two levels as part of what today I will call PIP, even though I hope that we may rename it.

PIP will have a daily living and mobility allowance, with the daily living component awarded according to an individual’s ability to carry out key activities so as to enable them to participate in everyday life. This is a fairly fundamental description of why it should be paid. However, I will ask four questions about the move to abolish one of the rates. First, what is the evidence base for this change? Clearly there is one; we know that the Minister is a good evidence-based policy developer. However, I am unclear about what it is. Will the two rates satisfactorily encompass the whole range of disability that we seek to help or will it be simply administratively easier and therefore quicker to administer and get help to people? What is the rationale?

Secondly, if neither of these two explanations is right, is it simply a device that has been selected by Government to help achieve the 20 per cent cut? Is it to be achieved by chopping out the bottom one-third of assessed needs? I am afraid that the Disability Alliance judges that this is the reason. It is particularly concerned that disabled people receiving the DLA low-care payments may lose support as a result of the scrapping of this bit of assistance and the Government’s stated aim of only helping those with the most severe needs.