Riots Communities and Victims Panel Final Report

Lord Cotter Excerpts

Monday 28th May 2012 Grand Committee

[Lord Cotter]

My Lords, this is a very important debate, and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, for bringing it forward. When the Government made their Statement on 11 August last year, I and many others were there. I congratulated the Government on their response, or their projected response, for small businesses and business community. I want to speak about the business community. I also asked the Government to ensure that the response measures they outlined, which sounded very good, would be implemented speedily with the minimum red tape. I was assured that that would be the case. However, since then, on many occasions in this House and elsewhere we have had to raise the inadequate response that has been given to the business community. In particular, I have come across many examples of shops that have struggled to survived, and some that have not survived, through lack of support. A number of trade associations have pitched in to provide tangible help to said small shops, but many other shops have been forced to look elsewhere to get help, and particularly to get money from banks, which is not easy at present and can be quite punitive. Those shops that have managed to work their way through have learnt the hard way that they have to fend for themselves. I am sure that the Minister will give me other good examples, but the trade associations have played their part. I quote from just one group of shops, which said:

“The Riot (Damages) Act should have achieved the same thing”—

that we had from the trade associations—

“but proved to be overly bureaucratic, immensely slow and in some parts of the country failed to provide any compensation at all”.

That is very disappointing in view of the fact that this issue was highlighted by me and others at the time. As the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, said, the Act needs looking at again. Also, I hope that when Ministers make these statements and say that yes, they will get behind businesses and that it is awful what has happened to them, they will ensure that a Minister is appointed to monitor the situation and not just let it drift along. I hope that civil servants are put in charge of ensuring that the words of the Minister are actually implemented and are not just warm words said easily at the time.