United Kingdom Internal Market Bill

Debate between Lord Carlile of Berriew and Baroness Altmann

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 26th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Altmann (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I have added my name to these amendments, moved so excellently and explained clearly by the noble Lord, Lord Hain, and of course the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie of Downpatrick. So I will not spend too much time going through the proposals of these particular amendments. I would just like to ask the Minister, from these Benches, why the Government are objecting to these amendments being in the Bill.

I understand that one of the arguments is that they are superfluous or not really required. However, given the clear lack of trust or concerns about some aspects of recent statements, and given that, I assume, the Conservative and Unionist Party is indeed committed to the Good Friday agreement, to no hard border on the island of Ireland and to the terms of the Northern Ireland protocol—on which this Government were so recently elected and which our Prime Minister signed up to—this amendment merely aims to ensure that measures in the Bill are fully compliant with both the Good Friday agreement and the Northern Ireland protocol, which was part of the great deal that the Government negotiated and put to the country. If Part 5 is a negotiating tactic and the Government really do not intend to use it and are aiming to get a deal, or if there is no deal, surely we still need to respect the Good Friday agreement, and our internal market needs to respect the promises made that this Northern Ireland protocol will be part of our future relationship with the EU.

I ask my noble friend to explain why the Government are unwilling to accept these amendments and to confirm that our party wishes to maintain our country’s reputation for upholding the legal agreements that we have reached with other countries in good faith.

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I start by apologising to the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, for speaking over her earlier; I had not realised that I had already been unmuted.

The issue of the Northern Ireland protocol is about nothing more nor less than peace and stability in Northern Ireland and peace and security in the United Kingdom. I share the view given with such clarity a moment ago by the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, that this matter should be explicitly declared in the Bill. There is nothing more important to national security and public safety than the Good Friday agreement. It celebrates the 21st birthday of its effectiveness on 2 December this year. My interest in the Good Friday agreement arose from my time as Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation and the years that followed. I have followed very closely both the sometimes fractious, but surviving, political process in Northern Ireland and the recent history of residual terrorism in Northern Ireland. Although it still exists, it is much reduced and is well understood, now, at least, by the authorities.

The Good Friday agreement has secured the United Kingdom. If you visit Northern Ireland and look at its political and business institutions and public authorities, you will see that it has given them a sense of benefit which is sometimes not matched in other parts of the United Kingdom.

I pay tribute to the political parties in Northern Ireland, some of which were regarded as enemies of the people until the Good Friday agreement—and whose presence at St Andrews caused a good deal of criticism of the then Government—for the way in which they embraced constitutional activity in the political issues of Northern Ireland. I once spent some time with some ex-terrorists who had, by then, become respected politicians. I was hugely impressed by the way in which they embraced those constitutional proprieties, both in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

There is no more important issue in the context of Brexit than ensuring that nothing is done to undermine in any way the Good Friday agreement. Everything else fades into unimportance. We must be clear that no sacrifices of the stability that the Good Friday agreement has brought will be made in the name of Brexit.

I will listen with great care to what is said by the noble Lord, Lord True, in replying to this short debate. I hope we will hear unequivocally from him not only that nothing will be allowed to happen that undermines the Good Friday agreement but that the Government are prepared to declare that in the Bill.

Business and Planning Bill

Debate between Lord Carlile of Berriew and Baroness Altmann

Report stage & Report stage (Hansard) & Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 20th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Altmann (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I have added my name to this extremely important amendment. However, I congratulate the Government on their introduction of the bounce-back loans and their enormous efforts to try to help businesses survive this crisis, which was not of their making or anybody else’s.

I am sure that my noble friend is sympathetic to the circumstances that could arise, and hope that she can reassure the House that the intention of this measure is not to change the balance of what is fair in circumstances where debts are being recovered by the lenders of these bounce-back loans. I find it difficult to understand why the Government have only really preserved the regulations relating to default and debt recovery for those loans up to £25,000, and only for micro-businesses. I would appreciate it if my noble friend could help the House in this regard. Restaurant owners and hairdressing salons which are limited companies may find that their equipment is subject to seizure when banks try to recover these bounce-back loans.

The banks do not need to recover the loans—indeed, they have expressed reservations and discomfort about being asked to take these borrowers to court. I believe there will be consultation with Ministers over the summer about how this is going to work. If they have a guarantee, they do not need, in theory, to press too hard to recover the loans. But if there are some attractive assets, it may be tempting for them to do so. I hope the Government will be able to state clearly that they want reasonable debt recovery only, and the intention is not to change the balance of fairness in these circumstances.

Forgive me if I am asking too much at this late stage of the Bill and with the emergency nature of the legislation, but I ask my noble friend to consider whether the Government might accept that they could take the power to make regulations, reapplying the Consumer Credit Act to debt recovery should that prove a popular and necessary measure, or whether they can include the range of £25,000-£50,000 in some other way so that we can avoid the reputational damage that may go along with this. Nevertheless, I welcome the bounce-back loans and I encourage my noble friend to give us some clarification.

[Lord Carlile of Berriew [V]]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, whose amendment this is—and I am very pleased to be a signatory—is a considerable expert on the subjects under discussion, as is the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann. I have enormous respect for them both, and for their skills in this area. I am but a mere lawyer and feel, to an extent, inadequate to parry on the financial details under discussion.

I have spent a lot of my time in recent decades dealing with fraud cases in which people often got themselves into financial difficulty, through no fault of their own, and were then under huge pressure from the banks. We have recently heard cases in which the Post Office prosecuted people who pleaded guilty to criminal offences which they had not committed. We have heard about the remedial action that is having to be taken, very expensively, to put those wrongs right.

The bounce-back loans are of course very welcome, but they bring a whole new cohort of people into, what is for them, often very substantial borrowing. Many of the businesses we are talking about do not have substantial overdrafts in the ordinary run of things. They are able to live on a cash balance, albeit often small, and they do not have to enter into sophisticated agreements with banks. This applies particularly to family businesses, which have either been created recently or are long established. The debt picture and the debt threats for such companies are frighteningly great compared to the time before coronavirus.

Therefore, over the years, there are plenty of examples, as mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, of banks being sometimes very oppressive towards customers who are put out of business without understanding what redress they may have against those banks. Unfortunately, these provisions remove some of that redress, which they might discover they have against the banks.

In my view, some simple legal remedies with flexibility are needed, so that if, for example, a company defaults on a loan but can demonstrate that, within a couple of years, it can haul itself back to not only profitability but the ability to repay the loan, we would be in a much better position. Surely that would be a far better outcome. The amendment we are considering is one solution to that problem, and that is why I support it.

I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, with whom I have exchanged emails, at her instigation, about this amendment. I said to her yesterday in an email that the Government really should produce some kind of arbitral procedure which would enable loans in the range we are debating to be discussed, a solution to be found that would satisfy the banks in the long term, and the businesses concerned to carry on trading. These loans have of course been introduced in an emergency, but it is actually less of an emergency for the banks than for the people who take out the loans, and about whom we are talking. Unless something better is offered, this amendment would rebalance fairness so that there is a level playing field between the lender and the borrower.