Flooding
Debate between Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe and Lord De Mauley(10 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord De Mauley
Yes, my Lords. Indeed, some examples of how the insurance industry has responded are that it has drafted in extra staff, including cancelling Christmas leave, to ensure that capacity is sufficient to deal with the increased volume of claims; it has deployed emergency response vehicles to flooded areas to give advice to affected communities; it has called customers in flooded areas to offer assistance; it has deployed loss adjusters to visit affected areas as quickly as possible to assess damage, begin the drying out of properties and arrange for repair work to begin; and, importantly, it has prioritised vulnerable and elderly customers.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)
My Lords, I am sure that the whole House is very pleased indeed with the information given to it about the actions being taken by the Government. However, to take the Minister back to the question asked by my noble friend Lord Harris, to which no basic reply was given, why have the Government decided that the review of improving the Thames Barrier should not take place until 2070? In fact, they have moved it from 2035. Can he explain to the House why they have done that and whether that is a safe act?
Lord De Mauley
That is an important question, and I absolutely take that. Noble Lords will be pleased, I hope, to hear that I am going out there to look at the construction myself. I might be better placed after that to answer their questions.
Eurozone Crisis
Debate between Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe and Lord De Mauley(13 years ago)
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Lord De Mauley
My Lords, there is plenty of time. Perhaps we may hear from the noble Lord, Lord Brooke.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe
I am grateful and I will be brief. I should like further clarification on the position of the IMF, which has been significantly involved with these negotiations. As I understand it, the IMF is already subscribing to three country adjustment programmes and will continue to do so. It has indicated that it may be required to look for more money from members of the IMF to put more cash into those programmes. I think that I am correct in my understanding of the Minister on that. If that is the case, we are therefore putting more money into the eurozone venture.
Postal Services Bill
Debate between Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe and Lord De Mauley
Lord De Mauley
My Lords, Amendments 21ZA and 21ZB relate essentially to the design of the employee share scheme. As the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe, explained, their broad thrust would be to ensure that shares are placed within an employee share trust. His proposal is helpful and constructive. I thank him and, in her absence, the noble Baroness, Lady Dean, for raising the issue. I know that they both have a wealth of experience in this area.
As the noble Lord explained, an employee share trust certainly has attractions, particularly for its ability to deliver the Government’s objective to ensure a long-standing employee stake in Royal Mail. The Minister for Postal Services has been clear in the other place that he sees these attractions; certainly, he does not discount the matter. However, like my noble friend Lord Razzall, we believe that it is important to keep options open on the design of the scheme until we have reached a firm decision on the form of the transaction. After all, individual share ownership has its own merits, giving the employees a very real sense of ownership.
As I have said, the design of the scheme will in part depend on the type of sale we undertake. For example, individual share ownership could be more appropriate if Royal Mail were floated. In that case, the question of the noble Lord, Lord Christopher, is answered because there would be a public market in the shares. It could also make sense—I think that the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, touched on this earlier—to have some combination of a trust and individually held shares. I spoke about this area more generally at some length in the debate on Amendments 18 and 19, as I did about the risks of recipients cashing in their shares early, and I am sure that noble Lords would prefer me not to repeat myself.
As I said when we discussed Amendments 18 and 19, paying equal dividends to each employee is a laudable objective. However, there are other sensible methods of allocating shares, and therefore dividends, to employees. I mentioned that in some schemes shares are allocated depending on length of service.
As regards restricting the sale of shares to anyone but an employee share trust, I can again understand the noble Lord’s concerns to ensure that the employees’ stake cannot be diluted by shares being sold to third parties. However, again this would place an undesirable restriction on the design of the scheme and would prevent us allocating shares to individual employees, if we thought that was appropriate at the time.
As I said earlier, it is in fact very unusual for a Government to commit themselves to an employee share scheme on the face of legislation. For example, I believe that—the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, will correct me if I am wrong—there is no similar commitment in the Transport Act 2000 to create the NATS employee share trust. I hope that all noble Lords welcome this upfront commitment to employee shares at Royal Mail but accept that it would not make sense to go even further and prescribe the particular detail of the scheme in legislation. For these reasons, I ask the noble Lord to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe
My Lords, I am grateful to all who have contributed to the debate. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Razzall, for contributing but not for what he said. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Young, for his support. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Christopher, and the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, that I accept the Minister’s view that in many respects the form of the transaction will determine the structure of the offering to employees. However, as I said, I do not think that we will get an IPO. I believe that in earlier debates, the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, said that he would be very surprised if we did, in which case we are talking about a different kind of structure whereby we sell direct to a company or group of companies, which in turn could create the trust advocated in these amendments. In the event that no market could be used as the yardstick for determining what the dividend or the annual growth in the value of shares should be—although one hopes that they will grow in value—we could turn to a mechanism based on the experience of using independent valuations of what NATS shares would fetch if they were put on the open market.
I recognise that there are problems with being too precise in advance, but, as I have said previously, the more that could be put in the Bill, the more encouraging and supportive it will be to staff who will go into this with disquiet and anxieties. It would also be better for prospective purchasers to know what they are buying into and plan accordingly. However, the Minister’s response has provided more comfort than I perhaps anticipated, given his earlier response to Amendment 19. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Agriculture: Dairy Industry
Debate between Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe and Lord De Mauley
Lord De Mauley
My Lords, the Government are very keen that broadband should be rolled out. Ministers intend to provide a strong lead in driving forward rural policy, such as ensuring that rapid rollout.
Government Spending
Debate between Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe and Lord De Mauley(14 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord De Mauley
My Lords, I entirely agree. The control of costs is vital; likewise the removal of waste, which does not necessarily lead to cuts in productivity.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe
My Lords, I welcome the new Minister to his role and wish him well in the future. One of the issues that the coalition Government will face will be unemployment. Will he again consider giving a better answer to the Front-Bench questions about the consequences of this action and the number of jobs that will be lost? I advise him that if he cannot do so today and unless we get the full facts, this side will not let go of the issue of the options on jobs that will disappear when cuts come. The Government should take note that they will be required to tell us what the consequences of each of their cuts will be in future.
Lord De Mauley
My Lords, I share with the noble Lord a grave concern about unemployment. I point out to him that, at the end of 13 years of Labour government, unemployment was higher than it was at the beginning. We will do our level best to tackle unemployment and keep it under control.