Corporate Insolvency and Governance Bill

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 9th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blencathra (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I have never considered my noble friend Lord Dobbs to be vulnerable to anything, but that is another matter.

I am honoured to be the chair of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee and we will consider the Bill tomorrow. Therefore, I cannot comment on what we might conclude but I want to inform the House that we will have a very important report to make on it, which noble Lords will wish to take into account for possible amendments in Committee. We hope to publish our report on Wednesday afternoon, so the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara, might wish to wait to see what we have to say. However, although I cannot say what our committee will decide, I anticipate that we might draw attention to the very large number of Henry VIII provisions—10 in the first 32 pages—and the very wide range of regulatory powers.

Speaking now in a personal capacity, I can say that I support the Bill. It is important that companies that are technically insolvent can get some breathing space to restructure, with the hope and expectation that they can carry on trading and resurrect themselves.

Although I support the need to make urgent legislation, all urgent legislation inevitably has flaws, which this House normally sorts out—if we have the time to do it. This Bill of 233 pages, one of the most complex we have ever seen, was rushed through the other place—all stages: Second Reading, Committee and Third Reading —in four hours, 45 minutes. The Committee stage to consider 47 clauses and 14 schedules took just 45 minutes. Our colleagues up the Corridor scrutinised this Bill at 12 seconds per page—surely a record. I know that we have a bit more time scheduled in this House, and the Bill must get better scrutiny than it did in the other place.

In the Explanatory Notes, the Government’s justification for all the regulation-making powers is that they might have to move at speed and do not want to bother Parliament. However, Parliament has ample time and can move at breakneck speed, as we are doing with this Bill. Emergency legislation is necessary on occasion and justifiable, and it is legitimate in this case, but that does not mean that every change in the future has to be rushed through by regulations, often using the negative procedure, when for major issues an Act of Parliament should be the norm. I agree with the important points made by my noble friend Lord Hodgson.

Finally, I am concerned about the provision in the Bill that a supplier has to continue supplying goods, with possibly no prospect of payment, to a company undergoing this procedure. If the company eventually fails, the supplier who was forced to continue supplying might not get any payment or will be behind a whole list of preferential creditors. We have all had the briefing note from R3, which says that HMRC is now legally the preferential creditor. The Government cannot have it all ways; they cannot compel a supplier to supply goods and then compel him to wait behind HMRC for payment. That is very unfair and, if I were a supplier, I would use the hardship excuse every time to cancel the contract if I was going to be stuck behind HMRC for payment.

Weights and Measures Act 1985 (Definitions of “Metre” and “Kilogram”) (Amendment) Order 2020

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

Wednesday 20th May 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend the Minister for giving us the chance to speak on this important subject. Indeed, we used to speak of nothing else but the Planck and Avogrado constants in the Bishops’ Bar, so let me make some mischievous points today.

The current definitions have been in effect since 1985, and they have worked perfectly. Since 1889, the IPK has been used to define the mass of the kilogram. It is a golf ball-sized object made of 90% platinum and 10% iridium and is regarded as the most perfect object to define its weight because of its stability. There is the original IPK itself, six sister copies and hundreds of national prototypes that are held by world Governments.

The excuse for this change is that the boffins say that the IPKs are unstable because their weight varies over time by up to the weight of 50 specks of dust. Their masses are calibrated as offset values. For instance, K20, the US’s primary standard, originally had an official mass of 1 kilogram minus 39 micrograms in 1889. In 1948, it was down 19 micrograms, or 19 specks of dust, but the latest verification shows it to be precisely identical to its original 1889 value. These specks of dust variations are accounted for all the time by using offset values. It is like the North Pole and magnetic variation, which everyone simply recalculates by taking the variation into account. For 130 years, there has never been a problem with any national IPK distorting the weight of a kilogram, so why change it?

The 1985 Act states that a metre is defined as:

“the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1/299 792 458 of a second.”

Can my noble friend tell the House whether that simple definition has caused any errors over the past 35 years? Have there been critical measurement mistakes because the second has not been defined as

“taking the fixed numerical value of the caesium frequency Delta nu caesium, the unperturbed ground-state hyperfine transition frequency of the caesium 133 atom.”

Will I have to return my tape measure to B&Q since the metre scale no longer corresponds to 1.09361 yards? Will the Minister tell us what practical differences these changes will make?

In conclusion, I would prefer my noble friend to tackle the law-breaking by many councils which are illegally introducing metric measures on road signs. The law is absolutely clear: metric units are not permitted on distance signs, whether by themselves or in conjunction with imperial units. Distances must be in miles and yards only, and that applies to all traffic signs, not just those for motorists. Yet there are countless examples of councils erecting illegal signs in metric units. Will my noble friend therefore take up this matter urgently with the Department for Transport to make sure that all councils obey the law of this country and not what they might wish it to be?