Covid-19: Businesses and the Private Sector
Lord Fox Excerpts(3 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Fox (LD)
My Lords, I draw attention to my interests, as set out in the register. We have heard from 45 speakers, I think, each highlighting how private sector industries and the people in them have contributed to the community. Obviously, there are too many to list in this winding speech but they all deserve our thanks, as does the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, for calling this debate. He was right to thank public sector workers, and I associate myself with his comments, but we should also remember that many private sector businesses and their employees are delivering public sector services. Refuse collection, running buses and trains, care workers visiting people in their homes and—sometime soon, we hope—the track and trace part of the future system designed to bring down the R number; most of these services come from private sector firms.
The noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, was right to emphasise the importance of public-private partnerships, and my noble friend Lord Addington was wise to caution about the nature of those relationships. In the past, public-private partnerships have attracted negative connotations; but, necessarily, the pandemic has required the rapid melding of public services and private businesses. The noble Lord, Lord Lang, spoke of the cultural differences, as did the noble Lord, Lord Wei. My impression is that some of these differences have been successfully bridged, albeit slowly sometimes. Can the Minister tell your Lordships what lessons have been learned and how these lessons will change the future of such public-private partnerships, once we are past the pandemic?
The noble Lord, Lord Caine, referenced the food industry and its distribution networks and stores, and as the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, said, that stepping up has been quite magnificent. I, like the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, would like to call out farmers. Work goes on, whatever the weather and whatever else happens, but some farmers are finding life very difficult. They are getting some help from the Government but not to the extent of the business that they have lost. Much of this may be a Defra concern, but can the Minister assure us that the needs of rural communities are not falling in the gaps between two government departments?
Looking forward, the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs is right. The lockdown has to end as soon as we can do so. In the “back to work” debate last week, I raised the issue of bolstering the confidence of workers that they will be safe once they return to work, and the need to support employers so that they know they have taken the right precautions. My noble friend Lord Burnett raised a question regarding liability. This is as true of the private sector as it is in schools.
In that debate, I also asked questions about the Health and Safety Executive. Frankly, I am still awaiting some answers. Perhaps this is my chance because, since that time, news has emerged that the HSE’s response will probably be more limited than the Statement implied. This is no surprise, given the huge cuts that the organisation has endured. The £14 million granted recently goes only a small way towards replacing them. Can the Minister ensure that the HSE has the resources it needs? Can he outline how it will go about giving workers and employers the confidence they need to get back to work? Further, to support this, can we not designate HSE and workplace safety workers as key workers? There is a wider need for more focused testing in workplace hotspots, whether or not they are designated as key workers. Can the Minister comment on plans for that?
As the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, mentioned, many non-medical sector businesses have also worked to develop technology or produce equipment to help tackle the crisis. Much of this work came from engineering and manufacturing businesses like those I worked in for many years. The country’s private sector response would have been even more effective if we had not been so careless with our industrial capacity over many years. The noble Lord, Lord Empey, is completely correct on that. My noble friend Lord Purvis highlighted that our current economic profile exacerbates our challenges going forward. Germany’s much-vaunted response was built on its industrial scale. In this context, the noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, spoke of the need for enterprise and innovation, and the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, spoke of the role of SMEs. They are right to highlight these. Of course, many smaller companies are integral parts of supply chains for larger companies. As the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, said, any future strategy needs to understand the role of these supply chains, how they drive innovation and how policy should help them to grow.
I hope that, if nothing else, we have learned the importance of our industrial capacity and that this informs our strategy as we go forward, for all political parties. The scope of this debate does not stretch that far, but I hope that we can return to it in future. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, I look forward to debating the Government’s plans to green our economy, and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, said, we need to discuss fully how we really grapple with the workplace skill deficit. In the meantime, I look forward to the Minister’s responses to this debate.
Weights and Measures Act 1985 (Definitions of “Metre” and “Kilogram”) (Amendment) Order 2020
Lord Fox Excerpts(3 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Fox (LD)
My Lords, those who review Hansard tomorrow may find the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, using words that they never expected him to utter. I think that many of your Lordships have been going back to their science, chemistry and physics lessons to prepare for this debate. As a science graduate, it is a pleasure to hear a bit of science, albeit in this context. I was interested to hear the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, questioning the Minister about the unit of time used to measure Members’ speeches. I have been allocated eight minutes for this summation, and I believe that I will use less than that, which will make up for some of the other, more elastic interpretations of the minute.
I join other speakers who have commended the Minister on the clarity of his explanation. This is a challenging piece of secondary legislation, and he has done a magnificent job in explaining it, so much so that I feel that there may be a future in home schooling or suchlike for him, so I congratulate him.
During the Brexit campaign, there were many spurious reports about people campaigning or indeed being told that exit was an opportunity to return to the great British verities of pounds and ounces in our shops; the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, reflected a little of that in his speech. I am therefore pleased that the Minister is sticking to his metres, and I am relieved by his reassurance, which I hope will reassure the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, that this will not change the weight of potatoes in his carrier bag.
The question on reinforcement asked by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, and the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, is important, and the general enforcement of weights and measures is the sharp end of this Bill.
It is difficult to introduce anything that has not been said around the Bill. However, I have a point around internationalism, which the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, and my noble friend Lady Northover, were particularly adept at introducing. The noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, made the point that the metre was originally adopted in 1799, and my noble friend Lady Northover set out the internationalism aspect. In effect, this is a parable of international co-operation, which was to a large extent European. We are dealing here of course with the metre and the kilogram, but the whole suite of SI measurements rests on a foundation of seven defining constants.
The noble Lord, Lord Wei, and the Minister alluded to the role of UK scientists. Looking back, we have the Planck constant: Max Planck was a German physicist; the Boltzmann constant: Ludwig Boltzmann was Austrian; the Avogadro constant: Amedeo Avogadro was Italian; caesium hyperfine splitting frequency—caesium was discovered by the chemist Bunsen and the physicist Kirchhoff, both of whom were German. The luminous efficacy of specified monochrome source is a harder call, but Joseph Fourier from France is an important precursor of the ability to measure that. However, the Minister and others will be pleased that when we come to the speed of light in a vacuum, I name James Maxwell, the brilliant British scientist, who first proposed light as an electromagnetic wave, as its progenitor. That leaves us with the elementary charge—the charge of a proton. Here we have to thank the American, Robert Millikan, for his famous oil drop experiment—I am sure all your Lordships remember it—which helps to measure that.
Of course, this is making a point, and the Minister is right to highlight the role of British institutions and scientists in this. However, the SI system is founded on centuries of international scientific co-operation. This is, therefore, an opportunity to speak up for international scientific co-operation. Long may it continue. These days, never has it been more needed to combat the situation we find ourselves in.
My noble friend Lord Rennard and the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, talked about the history of weights and measures. I think the history of science and co-operation is a much more important aspect. Schemes such as Erasmus and Horizon Europe are the basis on which European scientific co-operation were founded. I hope the Minister agrees that these are very important and must continue, so that we can continue to do the important things that this SI sits beneath. I also hope he shares my wish that the immigration Bill is not used to make things harder for scientists, technicians and their families to contribute to the future of science in this country.
I welcome this SI and the debate we have had and look forward to the answers the Minister can give us, particularly on the questions about enforcement. Overall, in a world in which unilateralism is seen to be the name of the game, this is a beam of multilateral light.
Covid-19: Business
Lord Fox Excerpts(3 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)
My Lords, we do not underestimate the challenges of lifting the lockdown that has been in place since 23 March 2020. It is in all our interests for it to happen safely and we recognise that there are difficult decisions confronting the Government and the businesses that have to adapt to these unprecedented circumstances.
We are pleased to note that the Government have talked widely to stakeholders, unions, industry bodies and the devolved Administrations about their plans for the removal of the lockdown. I hope that this commitment to solidarity in what has often been a contested area of public life is a harbinger of a commitment to work together on all aspects of industrial life, not just what is required to beat this pandemic.
I have three main questions for the Minister. First, surely the acid test for the five-point plan, across the eight workplace settings identified in the Statement, is whether ordinary working people who cannot work from home will have sufficient protection when they commute to and from their workplace, and in the workplace itself, from the measures announced yesterday. The Statement says:
“First, people should work from home if they can … For those who cannot work from home and whose workplace has not been told to close, our message is clear: they should go to work.”
What have the Government put in place for those who have followed this instruction and returned to work? Can the Minister confirm that there is to be no new legislation for this? Absent that, existing statute and common law means that employers have a duty to assess the risk of workers being exposed to Covid-19 and to implement ways of reducing that risk. In practice, we are told that this will require changes in working practices—screens, barriers, floor markings, signage, hand sanitisers, face masks and potentially a whole range of other interventions. In larger companies the outcome of this assessment has to be shared with employees, although there may well be a case for making this mandatory for all but the smallest premises.
We accept that much of the advice published yesterday is sensible and may be effective in reducing the risk of infection, but does the Minister accept that it will take time to procure and set up, and does he have advice for employees who have serious concerns about whether their workplaces are safe now and will be during the period while the physical adaptations and changes in working practice are being undertaken? Who will decide whether workplaces are safe now and in the future? The answer seems to be the Health and Safety Executive, established under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, and reliance on the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1992, as amended. Can the Minster confirm that this is the statutory provision that the Government are relying on and can he set out for us today the sanctions and penalties for employers who do not comply?
Secondly, can the Minister expand on the scientific advice that underpins this policy? As I understand it, the reproduction rate of the disease—the R number—is currently between 0.5 and 0.9. Given the large variation in the range given, can he explain precisely how this number has been calculated and give us a sense of the confidence limits that presumably must apply to it? More importantly, if we are going to rely on the R number, can he tell us when and how frequently information about R is going to be published and, in particular, what value of R would trigger the Government to review and possibly reverse the instruction to people to “go to work”? Is it when R is greater than 1.0? What R values will be specified before further lockdown relaxation stages can take place?
Finally, the recent ONS figures for sectoral mortality show that men working in the lowest skilled occupations had the highest rate of death involving Covid-19, with security guards having one of the highest rates. Men and women working in social care, a group that includes care workers and home carers, both had significantly raised rates of death involving Covid-19. There are also ethnicity and regional variations of significance. Does the Minister agree with me that these figures suggest that there may be a need to refine the measures recently introduced and that a case exists to go further, so that those currently carrying the highest risks of dying from Covid-19 have better protections from catching the disease in their workplace?
Lord Fox (LD)
I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement, and I wholeheartedly thank his department for adding a considerable degree of clarity to the shambles that we were treated to on Sunday. In bagging the “Countryfile” slot last weekend, the Prime Minister may have notched up high ratings, but did the Government really want 27 million people to witness him waffling on about non-specifics? For people to return to work requires confidence. Employees need to know that their employer is doing the right thing, and businesses need to know what they must do to keep employees safe. The Government, particularly the Prime Minister, set the foundations for that confidence. As one businessperson said to me this week, the way this has been sprung on people is ridiculous and shows no understanding of or regard for safety at work.
When these guidelines were published, they were very helpful, and the Statement notes that they have been broadly welcomed by the working world. However, the phasing should have included the drafting process and time for companies to start risk assessments and consult their staff and workers. Only then should the Government have announced a return to work.
I turn to some specifics. The noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, has ably approached the important issue of employee rights, and I endorse his comments. To avoid duplication, I shall probe the position of employers more deeply. Quite rightly, the guidance does not supersede any current legal obligations relating to employers’ health and safety practices. However, it is clear that coronavirus exposes businesses to additional risk beyond their experience. As the guidance states, each business will need to translate the guidelines into specific actions that it will need to take, and there are a great many variables. What is the formal process for checking that a business has translated the guidelines correctly? What constitutes an acceptable risk assessment? Should it be conducted in house or always by an independent third party? For example, can a business request an HSE audit to validate its approach? If it does, who would pay for it? In short, what constitutes sufficient due diligence?
It also seems that the complexity of supply chains has been hard to capture in the documentation. For example, a manufacturing business has many dozens of suppliers. For a tier 1 business to reopen, all those supply chain businesses have to reopen too, and they get smaller as the chain gets longer. The risk assessment process is even more onerous for smaller SMEs, so can the Minister tell us how the department will support SMEs to get back to work? For example, will the Government consider setting up a free service for SMEs to help them draw up their risk assessments? In the event that an employee falls ill and blames the company, who is liable? Have the management acted properly? What about insurance? We have seen problems with business interruption insurance. Have Her Majesty’s Government spoken with the insurance industry? Are compliant employers covered by their current insurance? In the event that the worst happens, how do employers demonstrate that they have done enough to avoid prosecution?
That takes us to the Health and Safety Executive. My noble friend Lord Newby spoke of the need financially to bolster the HSE, and we welcome the extra £14 million for its budget, but does the Minister agree that this sum is piffling compared to the cuts of £100 million or so that that organisation has experienced over the past decade? In the debate yesterday, the Leader of the House was asked whether the HSE is fit for purpose, and I do not think she responded, so I will rephrase that question and break it down. By how much does the HSE need to grow to do this job? What needs to change for it to take on this extra challenge? What is the timeline? When will it be ready to do this new job, and does it have the management capacity to do it? We must remember that, under Brexit, the HSE is already taking on other new, important functions.
Finally, I heard nothing about how the manufacturing and construction sectors will be supported with testing. As it stands, businesses that are deemed critical get particular access to testing. This week’s published advice talks about isolation in the event of an outbreak in manufacturing and construction firms, but what about testing? Can the Minister please acknowledge this challenge? Can he please undertake to deliver sufficient support on testing so that employees of these companies can really be kept safe? This is going to prove to be a really important issue. In the end, the Government need to do everything possible to ensure that back to work does not become back to square one.
Covid-19: British Business Bank
Lord Fox Excerpts(4 years ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Lord Callanan) (Con)
The Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme and the Coronavirus Large Business Interruption Loan Scheme have been developed to provide financial support for UK businesses that have been impacted by the coronavirus outbreak. There will be no limit on the number or aggregate value of loans that lenders can issue through these schemes. As of 29 April, over 25,000 loans, worth over £4 billion, have been provided to businesses under the two schemes.
Lord Fox (LD)
My Lords, this money is needed urgently, yet many businesses are encountering problems in getting access to it. For example, long-standing and profitable firms whose cash flow was perfect before the Covid-19 outbreak now apply to banks and are told that they cannot have the money because they do not have the cash flow. This is a Catch-22 situation. It is supposed to be emergency assistance. The Treasury issues guidance but on the grounds the banks are dragging their heels. Unless that culture is changed, good businesses will go to the wall. What are the Government doing to lean on the banks to change this very damaging culture?
Lord Callanan
I thank the noble Lord for his question; he makes a good point. We have received lots of helpful feedback from stakeholders on how the schemes have been working. He will be aware that, on Monday, the Chancellor announced further steps to ensure that lenders have the confidence they need to process these applications. We have removed the forward-looking viability test and the per-lender portfolio cap, to give lenders the full 80% guarantee across all CBILS lending. We keep the scheme under constant monitoring and are available for any future changes.
Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies
Lord Fox Excerpts(4 years ago)
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Lord Callanan
My Lords, I certainly agree with the noble Baroness about transparency. I can give her a commitment that the minutes of the SAGE meetings will be published at the end of the pandemic in line with normal procedure. The Chief Scientific Adviser has agreed that the names of those participants who wish to be named will be published in the coming days.
Lord Fox (LD)
My Lords, almost to the day, 34 years ago the Chernobyl nuclear disaster kicked off. In retrospect, the Soviet expert scientific committee was shown to be slow to react, driven by political apparatchiks rather than scientists. We saw the same in Wuhan. We are told by the newspapers that, of the 23 members of SAGE, 13 are paid advisers. Does the Minister agree that, to get the best advice, scientific committees such as SAGE should be left to independent scientists and should not include political advisers?
Lord Callanan
I agree. As I said in my Answer to the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, SAGE is not a membership body. The number of participants varies from meeting to meeting. There have been over 100 participants in all of the 29 meetings that have taken place on the Covid pandemic. It is up to the Chief Scientific Adviser and the Chief Medical Officer to invite the appropriate academics and advisers to each meeting. The number and names of participants vary from meeting to meeting.
Covid-19: Business Interruption Loans
Lord Fox Excerpts(4 years ago)
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Lord Callanan
It is important to remember that not all SMEs will want debt finance. There is a wide range of different support schemes available to businesses, including the job retention scheme and various local authority grants. We will be looking to publish, in the interests of transparency, the full range of offers that have been made to business in due course.
Lord Fox (LD)
My Lords, I join the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, in congratulating BEIS, the Treasury and HMRC on the work that they done but, looking at the point in a different way, of those 47 accredited lenders, only the banks have the liquidity to lend at scale. Those banks are generally sticking to their current customers and, today, only six banks are offering CBILS loans to new customers. This is a really important issue. Furthermore, many are not lending below £25,000; about 90% of applications are pitched at that level and below. I was pleased that the Minister said that this was a work in progress. Can he confirm that further modifications are now under consideration and also undertake to ensure that the lack of access for new customers and the exclusion of lower-value applicants are addressed really quickly?
Lord Callanan
The noble Lord makes a very good point. As I have said, we have already introduced a number of technical changes to the scheme—obviously it was introduced very rapidly. We are keeping all aspects of it under review. The one that he has mentioned is important; we are looking at bringing in new lenders as soon as possible, including Funding Circle, which specialises in smaller loans for companies such as those he talks about. To answer his question: yes, we are keeping this under review, we are seeking to get new lenders accredited as quickly as possible, and we are keeping all other aspects of the scheme under review as well.
Climate Change: COP 26 Arrangements
Lord Fox Excerpts(4 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Callanan
What I like about my noble friend is that he is always tenacious in getting his subjects on to the agenda. Perhaps in this instance it would be best if I did not comment directly on the substance of his question.
Lord Fox (LD)
My Lords, we welcome the Minister’s commitment to a successful COP 26. As he knows, success at the conference is predicated on intergovernmental discussions beforehand. It is only through shuttle diplomacy between the key players at the conference that anything meaningful can come out of it. Can the Minister tell us what level of engagement is currently under way with the key players around the world, particularly the United States, because without its signing up to the COP 26 conclusions it will be a very poor result?
Lord Callanan
The noble Lord is quite correct that a huge amount of international engagement will be required. We are looking to every country to put forward its nationally determined contributions this year at COP, including the United States. We have been talking to it about that. Obviously, the current coronavirus problem presents a challenge for international engagement, but we continue to do our best in the circumstances.
Artistic Content: Copyright Protection
Lord Fox Excerpts(4 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Callanan
Of course, my noble friend makes a very important point. As I said earlier, we have one of the strongest copyright protection frameworks in the world. Many of these are subject to international agreements, such as the TRIPS agreement. We will continue to engage in international fora and make sure that artists and creators have protection for their works.
Lord Fox (LD)
My Lords, a number of different ministries have commented on this, as my noble friend pointed out, including BEIS and DCMS. Am I to conclude from the fact that the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, is speaking to this that BEIS will be accountable for this and will be the ministry that makes sure that people—including, I should say, people in my family—who work in this industry get paid? If they do not, they need to know who is accountable.
Lord Callanan
Yes, BEIS is responsible for intellectual property and copyright, but of course there is considerable input from DCMS concerning the creative industries. DCMS is taking forward a creative industries forum and various round tables with content providers and social media platforms, et cetera. So it lies across the two departments.