Enterprise Bill [HL]
Debate between Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts and Lord Stoneham of Droxford
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)
My Lords, I have some sympathy with this amendment. It offers the possibility of speeding up the process of resolving complaints. For the respondent—that is, the person about whom the complaint has been made—time is his friend. He has the money so the longer that he can spin it out, delay and obfuscate, the better. The complainant may lose heart and give up, but in any case in the mean time he hangs on for money. There may be occasions when the Small Business Commissioner says, “Actually, if we could get that particular piece of information, we could resolve this. We could cut to the chase and reach a resolution”. Up to that point, the respondent could have been trying to flatter to deceive, appearing quite helpful and giving lots of answers, but not actually giving the answers to the questions that were relevant to the point at issue.
I think that the noble Lord, Lord Mendelsohn, has made a good point. I would like to see us find ways in the Bill to facilitate the speeding up of this process by the Small Business Commissioner being able to cut through the Gordian knot—if he believes that such a situation exists—by requiring that information which has not been offered voluntarily can be compelled to be disclosed with a view to making his job and the whole process work more efficiently.
Lord Stoneham of Droxford
I, too, lend my support to this series of amendments. I have a particular interest in Amendments 23 and 31. I will not bother to repeat all the arguments made by the noble Lords, Lord Mendelsohn and Lord Hodgson, because I support them entirely. On Amendment 23, throughout our debates I have expressed concern that there just was not sufficient power or clout at the end of the process for us to encourage a resolution, and indeed to encourage people to complain. If someone is dealing with an intransigent company or organisation and they think there are no sanctions at the end of the line, they may well think there is not much point in raising the issue, because the company or organisation will continue to be intransigent.
Amendment 31 deals with the end of a process where it is clear to the commissioner that they are getting repeated complaints about a particular organisation, and it is failing to apply any of the recommendations they have made. At that final stage, the commissioner should have some power. I accept that this may not be completely refined yet, but I hope that the Minister can respond on that point.
The commissioner should have some final power to recommend to the Minister, the Secretary of State or whoever is appropriate that there might be some final sanction that can ensure compliance. This would give the complainant the motivation at the start of the process to get involved with the Small Business Commissioner, and the company that is the source of the complaint some incentive to resolve the matter. Otherwise, there is a danger that the credibility of the organisation and the work of the commissioner will be undermined.
Enterprise Bill [HL]
Debate between Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts and Lord Stoneham of Droxford
Lord Stoneham of Droxford
My Lords, this is a simple probing amendment. If we have confidence in the Small Business Commissioner to deal with payment issues, and we are determined to build it up so that it has real authority and expertise, then it is the natural body for small businesses to go to for all late payment issues. So why do we not include public authorities as well? We know that it is better to have information and services all in one place. It simplifies and makes it easy for complainants to know where to go, as a last resort, to get matters resolved. Obviously, if there are other facilities available, they can be referred back. However, if there are genuine problems, why can the Small Business Commissioner not deal with them? Are we saying that there are no problems involving the public sector? Just the same issues emerge: small businesses find themselves dealing with big, anonymous organisations. There is a fear of falling foul of them, so they do not complain and the issues are not resolved.
The issues are the same whether we are dealing with small, medium or large businesses or public bodies. Why do we not have the Small Business Commissioner as a simple one-stop shop where these payment issues can be resolved as a matter of last resort? I beg to move.
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)
My Lords, this is an interesting amendment and worthy of further debate. Before I go any further, I ought to apologise to the Committee and the House for not having been present for Second Reading. Unfortunately, I was abroad, but I have obviously read the debate with care. I need to declare various interests, all of which are on the register of your Lordships’ House. I am a director or chairman of various companies both public and private; I am a regulated person under the Financial Services and Markets Act; I have undertaken various reports for the Government looking at difficulties involving the growth of small business, particularly in the charity and voluntary sector; and I am currently undertaking a review of Part 2 of the transparency in lobbying Act for the Government. All of those cross over various parts of the Bill, so it is important that I get that on the record at the beginning.
I am concerned about the situation with regard to what the Minister writes in her response:
“I want the Commissioner to act as a disincentive to unfavourable payment practices, and build the confidence and capabilities of small businesses to help them assert themselves in contractual disputes and negotiate more effectively”.
What the Government propose to do is splendid, but I would like it to go a bit further—in fact, I would like it to go rather further than the noble Lord, Lord Stoneham, suggested in his opening remarks—to make it possible for public authorities, in particular, to be brought within the purview of the Small Business Commissioner. I know that this is an issue with which the Federation of Small Businesses is concerned, and I suspect that Members of the Committee will have received briefings from it.
When I prepared for the Government the report called Unshackling Good Neighbours, which looked at the inhibitions that were affecting small businesses, particularly in the charity and voluntary sector—whether they were voluntary groups, community enterprises or, indeed, limited companies—it was clear that such organisations are playing an increasingly important role in the delivery of services to some of the most challenging and challenged parts of our society. The Government can provide the vanilla flavour solutions, but local organisations can provide answers to what are often very deep-seated and difficult challenges because they are more flexible and responsive to local conditions.
In all those cases, a public authority will directly or indirectly be the employer. The difficulty that those organisations have with public authorities can be widely demonstrated and evidenced, and it is a pity that the Government, who want a vibrant voluntary third sector, are not prepared to allow this to be part of the remit of the Small Business Commissioner. There are three particular aspects of the relationship of those groups with public authorities: the issues of commissioning, operating and payment. I could make a long speech about all of those, but I will not, I will just pick out a couple of points on each.
For commissioners, it is always easy to make a safe award: to award the contract to a big business, not a small one. The sunk costs of competitive tendering are not always understood. If you have a contract for £250,000 or £400,000, of course you need to get value for money for the public, the taxpayer, and you need to have some competitive tendering, but you must remember that if you ask 10 different voluntary groups to tender, nine of them will lose money because there is only one winner and the costs of their submissions are lost. There is not always clear enough consideration of the costs of making each and every tender in relation to the costs of the tender itself. This puts small companies, charities and voluntary groups under a very great disadvantage. The Minister might like to ask her officials to give her a copy of the report, published about 10 days ago. It states:
“Commissioning is failing charities and failing those they support … Commissioning is a significant challenge for small and medium sized charities for many reasons but not least their difficulty in competing against large, national and/or commercial providers who typically win larger contracts. These are often priced to work with those with less complex problems and those who are easiest to help—when small and medium sized charities are typically working with those with more complex needs who require more help. The commissioning process promotes competition over collaboration, making it harder for smaller organisations to participate and work together to benefit those they reach. Too often if they are involved they end up as ‘bid candy’”.
That is the position that the small business community should be able to consider. The same is true of operations. The monitoring costs of these contracts can be out of all proportion to the value of the contract. Not only that, but half way through the contract the basis for monitoring is changed, so that the small business is put under considerable administrative costs or has to change the way in which the contract is being looked at. They also come up against the operational requirements of other government departments. One of the examples I came across was from the Medway towns, in which a small voluntary group wanted two or three volunteers to assist the expansion of its operation. It asked the local jobcentre for help and 40 CVs were sent. They had to be considered and when requests for interviews were sent out, only about 15 turned up, and in the end it made only one of the three expected appointments.
When we inquired why that was the case and why 40 had been sent, the jobcentre said that it was interested in fulfilling its requirements for jobs offered and could put 40 ticks in the box if it sent along 40 CVs. If it had sent only 10, it would get only 10 ticks in the box. These are the sorts of practices and burdens imposed on small businesses, particularly in the voluntary sector, which the Small Business Commissioner should be able to tackle. The commissioner can do so by publicising difficulties, intervening to prevent repetition and facilitating co-ordination between government departments, but to do that, the commissioner needs to have the power when necessary to stand up and get involved with public authorities.
I hope that my noble friend will be able to reflect on this as we work our way through the Bill and we come to the later stages. It is in line with the Government’s thinking, and it would help greatly in the development of a vibrant civil society.
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts
My Lords, Amendments 6, 7 and 35 are probing amendments, designed to explore the Government’s thinking about how the Small Business Commissioner will actually work in practice. This goes back to some of the ground covered by the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill of Clackmannan, in an earlier debate. I hope that my noble friend can enlighten the Committee about the sort of experience the Government expect the Small Business Commissioner to have. I am sure it will be tempting to say, “It depends, it depends”. At one end of the spectrum they could be the doughty Whitehall—or ex-Whitehall—warrior, practised in the ways of government. At the other end is the practitioner with a successful small business record behind them. Those two would lead to very different approaches in the way that the commissioner carries out its functions.
Amendment 6 suggests the appointment of an advisory panel, with membership drawn from different sectors and geographical regions. This is because it will be exceptionally difficult for a commissioner to grasp the full range of the commercial and industrial challenges that small businesses face with payments and other things. Those challenges will be different depending on whether you are operating in Stockton-on-Tees or deepest Devon. The first question, therefore, is whether he or she can have an advisory panel to provide routes into information about and detailed knowledge of how different industries and different parts of the country operate.
Amendment 35 is intended to make sure that the commissioner does not become M25-centric, which is always a danger if one gets bound into Whitehall. It requires the annual report, specified in the Bill, to contain information about visits made around the country. We can therefore be reassured that real-life knowledge is being gained. This is part and parcel of the philosophy which I hope the Government can reassure us will be espoused. Amendment 7 is slightly focused and deals with the issue of relationships with regulators. We will deal with regulators in more detail when we come to Part 2, but this amendment—if the Government were minded to consider it—would give the Small Business Commissioner a particular duty or locus in highlighting specific areas of concern relating to regulators. Small businesses, individually, simply cannot take on regulators because of the time involved and the fear of what might happen. There is a role here for the Small Business Commissioner to assist in the Government’s deregulatory agenda. The Government are very keen on deregulation and an amendment on these lines would assist in that process.
It is always worth while remembering how one gets regulatory creep and how the tentacles of bureaucracy push on outwards. Noble Lords may be familiar with the PAT: the portable appliance test. They will recall that one used to push the flex into the back of the kettle then switch it on. This meant that the flex was used a lot and frayed; water and electricity do not mix well together. After some staggering and terrible accidents, the PAT was introduced and these appliances had to be inspected. That quickly morphed into an inspection of all portable appliances, because they all had flexes and were all equally dangerous. By the time this happened, the electric kettle was no longer a problem because, as noble Lords will know, one now buys a kettle with a stand it goes straight on to; the flex does not move at all. So the whole rationale for the portable appliance test had been morphed around.
Now we have a situation where, although the regulations require an inspection only every three years, small businesses are often encouraged to have inspections every year. It costs about £1 a shot to have your portable appliances tested. An enormous amount of time, money and effort is being wasted to no great avail. These are the sorts of things about which the Small Business Commissioner, in dealing with a regulator, could say, “Actually, there is an issue here that you could tackle and help with”. I know it is outside the scope and it is widening the Bill, but it is an area in which small businesses could be greatly helped.
I take part in the Lord Speaker’s outreach programme, talking to schools. It is a wonderful thing to do and I learn an awful lot every time I go to a school. I often finish by having a cup of tea with the headmaster. At a school I went to last year, the headmaster asked me whether I knew about the portable appliance test. I said I knew a bit about it. He said the school had just had an inspection. The inspector went round the classrooms and found an overhead projector on the ceiling. He said, “I need to check that because it is portable”. The school said, “You can only get at it if you get on a ladder and get up there. Therefore, it is not portable and nobody can get at it anyway”. The inspector said, “Well, I think it is”. The school, quite bravely, said, “We are going to ring the Health and Safety Executive in London”. The Health and Safety Executive found in favour of the school. I asked the headmaster, “Was that very good?”. He said, “Not exactly, because they then went through the whole of the rest of the school—absolutely everything—inch by inch, and they managed to find in the bursar’s desk drawer an electric pencil sharpener which had not been inspected for three years and they therefore failed the school”.
Those are the sorts of costs that are being applied to businesses, and if we had a Small Business Commissioner he could draw attention to those sorts of things and do something about relieving the burden. These are probing amendments at this stage. They are designed to try to find out what sort of person is going to do this job and then to try to find a way in which they can do things to assist the Government’s deregulatory agenda and the operational efficiency of small businesses. I beg to move.
Lord Stoneham of Droxford
I cannot resist the temptation to support the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, as he was so positive about my amendments. We will see what the Government say on these amendments but I sense that there is a general watering-down of the proposals and they will be slightly reticent about the advisory panel. If there is not a board or whatever supporting the commissioner, clearly a panel is a very good idea because it will widen support. It is related to the regional issue because if this body has only 50 staff, it is difficult to see how it is going to have regional purveyance and credibility around the country. All these points, plus the duty on the commissioner to refer good advice and to deal with regulatory issues, mean that this becomes much more of a one-stop shop where local businesses can come, initially with problems related to payment, but its remit will widen as other issues are seen to be pertinent.