Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill
Lord Popat Excerpts(9 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord Popat (Con)
Order please. We are on Report. I am afraid that intervention is limited.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
It is my fault, my Lords—I tempted the noble Lord and he could not resist. The point about zero-hours contracts and short hours is that they were seen largely as a middle-aged women’s problem, but there was some degree of protection. What has happened since the recession is that a third or perhaps a half of those under the age of 30 are cobbling together 30 or 35 hours’ work a week from splintered jobs, none of which, as far as we can see at the moment, would for many of them bring them into the national insurance system. That is the new dimension. It is the very dimension that the noble Lord, Lord Stoneham, mentioned in his speech on the previous amendment.
The noble Lord, Lord Newby, said that we should be introducing a new cliff edge for those below the JSA level who might be working only 12 hours a week. However, in this case, they would be better off on JSA, which they could still receive. The first £20, or the first £5 depending on their status, would be disregarded for these purposes. The rest of the hours would not be counted up until they hit JSA level, at which point the person would get JSA. That can already be done now. Therefore it is not true that there would be a cliff edge—it is not an adequate offer back. When people work 10, 12 or 14 hours, it is deducted off their JSA and if their JSA is higher, they keep it. The argument is invalid.
Secondly, the noble Lord, Lord Newby, says that many students will not need to be within the national insurance system since in later years they will go on to build their contributions. In that case there is no cost or problem to the Government at all. The problem now is that people only know at the end of their working lives whether they have got a sufficient contribution record. If you are poor and you have got missing years you are not able to fish your earlier years. If students are building up redundant ones they are no different from anyone who works for 40 years’ worth of stamp and only needs 35 to get into the national insurance system. What we are giving them is a measure of protection that they might not otherwise have. Therefore I do not see why the noble Lord, Lord Newby, is worried.
The noble Lord’s third and final point was that this affects only 50,000 people, as if 50,000 people do not really matter. There were something like 25,000 or 30,000 women who were partners or spouses of people in the armed services who lost national insurance when they accompanied their partner abroad. I made this point. His right honourable friend in the other place, Steve Webb, conceded and brought those partners— mostly women but not invariably so—into the NI system. They were only half the number we are talking about today, but he deemed that it was appropriate and desirable. Even though it was far more complex than what we are dealing with today, he did it. I hope we are not being told that 50,000 is too trivial to bother about in one area but that 20,000 is fine in another. That argument simply will not run.
Finally, as I have said, the Minister says that we are talking about only 50,000. I reckon that that is a gross underestimate. He is drawing on the ONS and the Labour Force Survey in which people self-report their status. The CIPD figures we talked about earlier drew instead on a survey of employers who had far more accurate information about the employment status of their staff.
As he will know, the forum we set up, of which I was fortunate enough to be a member, recently has had information which suggests that if you look at the P14s, which is what the employers submit to HMRC, as opposed to what the employees submit, it looks as though something like 130,000 people additionally may come into this situation, as well as another 30,000 or so who we do not know about because the employers are too small. Therefore, the figure clearly is more likely to be 200,000 based on more reliable information coming from the employers through P14s than the 50,000 figure that the noble Lord offered us, which is based on incomplete and inaccurate information or on people simply not fully understanding their legal status as far as their contract of employment may be concerned.
Those are the arguments of the noble Lord. I do not think that any of them is true. The cliff edge argument is not relevant; the number argument is not the case; and the question of students making it unnecessary does not matter because there will be no cost or complication for us.
As for having to wait for the results of the forum, I have tried to get that forum to discuss the policy options. The civil servants have been most helpful. The forum was explicitly told by the Minister’s right honourable friend Steve Webb that we were not to discuss policy but only to try to get some accurate numbers. That is fine but we could have discussed policy on the basis of this; that was prohibited and therefore we were not able to do so. I am afraid that he attributes to this forum greater powers, greater range, greater extensiveness and greater capacity to encourage change, which is an assumption that I would have liked to share with him, than his right honourable friend permitted.
I am sorry but I do not think that anything the Minister has said tonight takes us one step forward. He does not rebut a single argument that my noble friend Lady Drake and myself made. None the less, given the time, obviously I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill
Lord Popat Excerpts(9 years, 8 months ago)
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Lord Popat (Con)
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, for his amendment and for his comments on the work of the Regulatory Policy Committee. I liked his comment on the “traffic light” solution. Indeed, I give credit to the party opposite for its decision to establish the RPC in the first place. That created an important and enduring cornerstone for the regulatory machinery—one which this Government have continued to develop and improve.
The amendment requires the Secretary of State to review the current regulatory machinery used to consider regulatory and deregulatory proposals. Of course, such reviews already take place from time to time. They look both at the distribution of responsibilities between different bodies, and at the specific rules and requirements. When this Government came into office, they carried out their own review as to what arrangements were required to deliver their key policy priorities for better regulation. Critically, that involved a strengthening of the RPC’s independent scrutiny role.
The Government carried out a further review in 2012, when some useful changes were made, including a “fast track” route for proposals whose impact on business is modest. That change has helped make the system more efficient for both departments and the RPC. I am sure that the Government will ensure that reviews of the system will continue to take place as and when necessary. Given the terms of the amendment, I am equally sure that the Opposition, were they to be in our place, would do the same.
However, the benefit of reviews needs to be balanced against the need for stability in the system. This is why, for example, the appointment of the verification body under the business impact target in Clause 25 is required to be for the duration of a Parliament. An open-ended duty to review, as proposed in this amendment, could potentially undermine that stability and as a consequence put at risk a future Administration’s ability to deliver against the business impact target. It would also generate uncertainty for stakeholders about the wider regulatory system.
The amendment also requires that once a review of the machinery has been completed the Secretary of State must bring forward proposals to enhance the role of the RPC. The Government are by no means opposed to expanding the role of the RPC where it can add value—in 2013, we asked the RPC to scrutinise the new small and micro-business assessment—but it is very odd to create a statutory commitment to a further expansion of the RPC’s role in advance of the review that the amendment envisages.
The noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, asked whether the Government were legislating for the RPC. We are legislating to underpin the business impact target with robust independent scrutiny. Clause 25 requires the Secretary of State to appoint an independent body to perform that verification function. The proposals in the Bill entrench in legislation the verification role currently performed by the RPC but do not change the status or independence of the RPC. As regards the status of the RPC, it is an advisory non-departmental public body of BIS. It is not established in statute and does not have a separate legal personality. Its members are independent from the Government.
There is cross-party support for the RPC, the wider framework within which it operates and the principle that, from time to time, that framework should be reviewed. We can rely on that consensus to secure such reviews when they are needed. We do not need a statutory provision to do so. I hope that the noble Lord will be persuaded by my explanations and will agree to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara
I thank the Minister for that response and also the noble Earl, Lord Lindsay, for his comments. We are at exactly the same place on this. I was only a bit sad that I got caught out trying to have my cake and eat it by sketching out the work which I think we agree is continuing and necessary, which will be to think harder about the regulatory functions, how best they can be delivered and—constructively and creatively—how best to do that work of review and scrutiny. On the other hand, I was taken by the “best show in town” argument: since we need something like this, why not just build on what we have, because it seems to be the best version of the body we all seem to think is necessary?
The Minister is right: the ecology of regulation needs a bit more scrutiny than it sometimes gets. Of course, his work and experience here were instrumental in our thinking on this. Without that scrutiny, we will not be in a very strong place to build on the policy issues we are talking about, and to think harder about the way in which legislation and regulation will bite on individuals, companies and society as a whole. There is not an easy solution. We must just keep it under review.
I note what the Minister said in his response. Maybe we should leave things as they are for the moment, but the lessons need to be taken back to all departments, not just BIS. There may be some argument for BIS perhaps loosening its hold on this and encouraging other departments to have a bigger share of it. Although in some senses that makes it less likely to be effective because there is no champion within government, it might have the impact of raising other people’s game, which would be good. We need more thinking around that—I am not saying that we would necessarily do it at this stage.
The annual report of the RPC is very impressive, as the noble Lord said. The volume of work it does is astonishing, given that it is independent, non-statutory and has no particular locus within government. I do not know how we get these people to do the work they do, but it is a message we might pick up in other areas. With that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill
Lord Popat Excerpts(9 years, 9 months ago)
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Baroness Donaghy (Lab)
My Lords, perhaps I may say a couple of words in support of these amendments. I was a member of the first Low Pay Commission when it was formally established in 1998. We obviously spent some time on the issue of enforcement. The difficulty was that the people who were in industries that did not pay a statutory minimum wage were very often reluctant to complain in the first place. Certainly, in some of the textile industries that we visited, it became fairly clear that if anyone put their head above the parapet, not only would they eventually lose their job in their own workplace but they would not find a job again in any textile industry within travelling distance. I am sure that that is not unique to textiles, so it will always be a major problem to enforce this and to get people to make a formal complaint and take that kind of risk with their future.
The Low Pay Commission is also keen for there to be a very good system of accessible information for people who want to know what their rights are. The original information issued by the Low Pay Commission was very good. Unfortunately, this Government changed it so that it was no longer fit for purpose. That was a statement made by the Low Pay Commission—that the website was no longer fit for purpose—so it is hardly surprising that the number of complainants is not only not rising but is probably falling in relation to the increased number of people in the labour market as a whole.
As my noble friends Lord Watson and Lord Whitty have said, the casualisation—or further casualisation—of the workforce makes this extremely difficult to enforce. My view is that the more headline news you get about successful prosecutions and fines, the more likely people are to put their head above the parapet. It always amazed me when people used to say about the previous employment tribunal system, “Oh, the penalties that you can get are £50,000 a year”, which was ridiculous; the level at the time when I was chair of ACAS was £5,500. That was the average settlement, not the headline figures that newspapers would imply. The reality of the minimum wage and its enforcement is so far removed from the kind of discussion that we are having today that it is almost difficult to know where to start. I urge the Minister to think about accessible information, and perhaps to consult the Low Pay Commission to ensure that it is adequate for both applicant and respondent.
Lord Popat (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Young, for his amendments to Clause 147, and for giving us the opportunity to debate the important subject of the national minimum wage. I have heard a number of concerns raised by the Opposition about the underpayment of the national minimum wage. I hope that my notes will cover what the Government are doing about that.
Clause 147 is an important step towards ensuring that employers comply with the national minimum wage legislation. It will amend the National Minimum Wage Act 1998 so that the maximum penalty that can be imposed through a notice of underpayment will be calculated on a per-worker basis rather than per employer. This will substantially increase the penalty for employers who owe large arrears to a number of workers. My noble friend Lord Storey asked this question, so I am pleased to confirm that the penalty of £20,000 is per worker.
By applying the penalty to each worker, employers owing high arrears to a number of workers may be issued with a greater penalty overall, as well as a higher maximum penalty. The higher penalty will deter employers from breaking national minimum wage law in the first place, ensuring that workers receive what they are entitled to and to come down harder on those employers who continue to break the law.
I will now respond to each amendment. Amendments 68ZN and 68ZP are designed to increase the maximum civil penalty available for non-payment of the national minimum wage from £20,000 to £50,000 per worker. I heard what the noble Lords, Lord Whitty and Lord Watson, had to say on this subject, and we welcome the recognition from the Opposition that there is a need to increase these penalties but we do not see the evidence to set the upper limit at £50,000. As the impact assessment for the measure sets out, 6% of cases in 2013-14 involved total arrears in excess of £20,000. None of these cases was anywhere near the upper limit suggested in the amendment.
Under the Bill, the penalty will be applied on a per worker basis, as I said. When you look at the cases where HMRC issued a notice of underpayment in 2013-14, the change means that in almost every case, the employer would have been issued with a penalty equivalent to the total amount of arrears they owed, rather than having the overall penalty capped at £20,000. As a result, the amendment would have had very little impact on the level of penalties in those cases.
However, I reassure noble Lords that if, in future, there is evidence to suggest that a higher maximum is needed, we can make that change through secondary legislation. I hope that I am giving reassurance to the party opposite that if we think in future that £20,000 is not enough and we need to raise it, we can bring in secondary legislation to increase the penalty.
Lord Young of Norwood Green
How many cases were in court for underpayment of the national minimum wage last year?
Lord Popat
I will certainly come back to the noble Lord on that in a minute.
I turn to Amendment 68ZQ. It is designed to impose reporting requirements on the Government’s approach to national minimum wage compliance and enforcement, as well as the impact of the minimum wage on wages more broadly.
I welcome the Opposition’s continued interest in this area and their desire to ensure that the system is working as well as it can. However, we believe that we are already transparent in our approach to reporting on the effectiveness of the national minimum wage and its impact on workers’ wages. Every autumn, the Government submit evidence to the independent Low Pay Commission, including an assessment of the national minimum wage’s impact on the labour market. That evidence is considered by the Low Pay Commission before it makes its recommendations to the Government. If new minimum wage rates are to be set, Parliament has an opportunity to debate them before they are introduced in October. Therefore, I hope that noble Lords will agree that the amendment is not necessary, as it simply imposes obligations that will duplicate reporting that is already taking place.
Finally, I turn to Amendment 68ZR, which would give local authorities power to enforce the national minimum wage. The Government already have an enforcement body dedicated to the national minimum wage, with a strong track record in this area.
I will respond to the question of the noble Lord, Lord Young. Since it started that work in 1999, HMRC has identified more than £54 million in arrears for more than 229,000 workers during more than 65,000 employer interventions. We are doing a lot more. The Bill, as my noble friend Lord Stoneham said, is to give small businesses help and support. We have gone as far as we can to make sure that employers do not break national minimum wage legislation. The noble Lord, Lord Young, asked how many cases of arrears there were last year. In 2013-14, there were 680 cases, with total arrears of £4.6 million.
Lord Young of Norwood Green
My Lords, I heard what the Minister said in response. I do not think that we are not totally satisfied with it. I may have missed in the exchange over the figures the Minister’s response to our view about enforcement by local authorities. Can he confirm what attitude is taken towards that?
Lord Young of Norwood Green
Towards regulations devolving the enforcement of the national minimum wage to local authorities, as proposed in Amendment 68ZR.
Lord Popat
My Lords, we have a very strong HMRC enforcement regime. We do not see any point in giving the power to local authorities. However, HMRC has regional offices to enforce the legislation. Of course, many other government departments play an important role in enforcing it.
Lord Morris of Handsworth (Lab)
Is the Minister aware that a lot of people on the minimum wage do not have the information and that some people do not have the ability to work out what their entitlements are? What steps can be taken therefore, in a form which informs the employee, to the point where they are getting what they are entitled to and do not have to seek any external assistance, whether through an inspectorate or otherwise? It is a duty and a responsibility that the spirit of the national minimum wage when it was introduced should be upheld. It was introduced to be helpful rather than to be put in a legal straitjacket whereby people are not getting the underlying justice that was its intention.
Lord Popat
The noble Lord, Lord Morris, raises the important issue of how we help to ensure that people are paid the minimum wage and what guidance we give them on working out by how much they are being short-changed. Since 2013, we have published detailed new guidance on calculating the national minimum wage, which is available on the GOV.UK website. We have also updated several GOV.UK pages which hold information about the national minimum wage. This includes new information about current and future national minimum wage rates, a worker’s checklist, guidance on work experience and internships, information on the increased penalty for breaching the national minimum wage and the revised criteria for naming and shaming employers who breach national minimum wage legislation. Therefore, quite detailed information is available for workers to help them work out by how much they might have been short-changed in cases of people being paid less than the national minimum wage.
Lord Young of Norwood Green
A propos the Minister’s final point, is there not also the employment rights helpline, which we introduced? Does the Minister have information on the level of complaints or reporting of failure to pay the minimum wage on the employment rights helpline?
Lord Popat
I am afraid that I will have to write to the noble Lord with that information. I do not know whether it is available on our websites.
I have just been given some information on how many calls have been received on that subject. From the beginning of 2014 to October 2014, the number of inquiries that we received was 10,086. The number of complaints that we received relating to the national minimum wage was 1,550. I will certainly write to the noble Lord with more information on this subject, which we appreciate is quite important.
Lord Young of Norwood Green
I thank the Minister for his response. We will take into account the points that he has made and reflect on whether we need to come back to any or all of these issues on Report. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Company, Limited Liability Partnership and Business (Names and Trading Disclosures) Regulations 2014
Lord Popat Excerpts(9 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Popat
That the draft Regulations laid before the House on 27 November be approved.
Relevant document: 16th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments
Autumn Statement
Lord Popat Excerpts(9 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Popat (Con)
My Lords, I remind the House that this is a time-limited debate and when the clock shows 5, time is up. Thank you.
Lord Wrigglesworth (LD)
My Lords, this is a welcome, if short debate. We are very much looking forward to the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Rose, with his extensive business experience, and to his comments on the Statement published yesterday.
My noble friend, in opening the debate, outlined the many positive aspects of the Autumn Statement, and did so quite extensively. I do not want to follow him, but from these Benches I very much want to welcome the £150 million that has been promised to mental health expenditure, which we have championed, particularly in recent times. I also welcome the £100 increase in personal allowances for low and middle earners. This has had a major impact on low earners in this country in the programme of increases in personal allowances that have been made. This further increase will help those on low pay.
I also welcome from these Benches the removal of national insurance for apprentices under 25. That will undoubtedly encourage many firms to take on more apprenticeships, and that massive expansion and improvement in quality will, I hope, continue. I welcome the infrastructure spending and the roads programme, as capital expenditure is vital to the long-term productivity improvement and long-term benefits of the economy.
I also mention the postgraduate loans that have been introduced. This has been a gaping hole in the provision of funds for students, and those loans will make an enormous impact, just as the other loans have, on student numbers in our universities. The final thing that I would mention, which my noble friend touched on, is the whole industrial strategy being pursued by BIS. It has had an enormous impact and is very much welcomed, particular by manufacturing industry, and is helping to rebalance the economy in the way that everybody in this House wants to see.
When it comes to the balance of the Autumn Statement, I have some anxieties. I did not see whether the Chancellor or the Chief Secretary had their fingers crossed yesterday, but in many ways it is a fingers-crossed Autumn Statement. It is tremendously important that confidence is sustained, not only in the bond markets of the world but in the many businesses and institutions throughout the world that will be investing in this and other economies. I hope that the Autumn Statement will help to sustain that confidence in a way that will keep investment going. Those of us who have been involved in business know just how important confidence is in deciding to invest millions or billions of pounds in projects. Confidence is vital and I hope that the Statement will keep confidence high.
There is no doubt that the economy is growing at an incredible rate. To put on 2 million extra jobs—more than the whole of Europe combined—is tremendously consoling to somebody like me from the north-east, where we still have the highest levels of unemployment in the United Kingdom. It is an incredible achievement by the Government, and it is that growth in the economy that is sustaining the confidence to which I have just referred. However, the forecast cuts in expenditure that have to come in the next Parliament are enormous, and I am not sure that people outside this House, or even in the House, have fully understood the scale of the proposed cuts, which we need to think about very hard.
Under the proposals, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office will have had a 65% cut in spending. It is proposed that the Home Office should have a 46.5% cut in spending, and that BIS will have a cut of 30%. If those departments are going to face cuts on that scale, it will cause major difficulties for their own services and for the services they provide. Inevitably it raises a question about the ring-fencing of all departments, particularly the National Health Service, if the cuts are to be sustained.
The only hope, of course, is that growth really takes off not only in the economy generally but in the tax revenues that are coming in. That will enable future Chancellors not to have to make cuts on the scale that is being suggested. We need to be very cautious about whether we can sustain either ring-fencing or should make cuts on that scale. Anyone who thinks about this will see that they are probably impossible to achieve. That is why I described the Autumn Statement as a fingers-crossed one. If we get the increased revenue, we will not need to bring in some of the cuts that are causing such great disfavour.
Economy: Growth
Lord Popat Excerpts(13 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord Popat
My Lords, it is with a great sense of honour and privilege that I speak for the first time in your Lordships’ House.
I am grateful to all noble Lords, and to the staff of the House, who were particularly helpful in allowing my Guru Moran i Bapu to witness my introductory ceremony in the Chamber. It is his teachings of truth, love and compassion that are the guiding principles of my life. His presence was in itself an historic occasion, as no Indian spiritual leader had ever attended this House to witness such a ceremony, and for me it was a great honour.
As some of you may know, I was born in Uganda and came here at the age of 17 under very difficult circumstances. In January 1971, I accompanied my father to drop my sister at Entebbe Airport, from where she was flying to study in the UK. At the stroke of midnight, the army of Idi Amin, the then dictator of Uganda, took control of the airport and ordered all flights to be cancelled.
Our family knew that our time in Uganda was limited, and in May of that year I moved to Britain, working in a Wimpy bar. The following year, Idi Amin expelled 30,000 Ugandan Asians, ordering them to leave within 90 days. They left behind a prosperous past and walked towards an uncertain future. I would like to thank the Conservative Government then led by the late Sir Edward Heath, who, along with a number of voluntary organisations, helped my fellow Ugandan Asians in our hour of need. We have never forgotten this lifeline that we were given, and I am proud to say today, 39 years on, these very same people are some of the most hard-working and patriotic in the country.
The powerful emotions that I feel today are simply explained. This country can boast that here, in Britain, people in genuine need of refuge can find a safe home, live in peace and rebuild their lives. If that was not enough, we were given the same rights as those who were born here, including the right to vote, which is a gift that we particularly cherish, yet that right is superseded by the privilege of joining your Lordships' House. From what I have witnessed in your Lordships’ House, and what I have learnt during the last 40 years, Britain's tolerance, decency, fairness and justice are its finest qualities. It is testimony to the tolerance and generosity of this country that the Hindu community is explicit in being proud to be British and proud to be Hindu, seeing no contradiction between the two. On the contrary, it is a mutual reinforcement.
I decided to take the title of Lord Popat, of Harrow, because for 30 years I have been a member and am now president of Harrow East Conservative Association. My parents lived in Harrow and I see this as a tribute to them, to whom I owe everything. My only regret is that they are no longer here to share this with me.
Over the past 40 years, the Ugandan Asians who came here as refugees have played a very successful role in Britain’s economy and are now a central part of Britain’s economic fabric. After training as an accountant, I myself have run my own business—and this brings me to the topic of today’s debate. The past decade of government reminds me of President Reagan’s pointed insight into the Government’s view of the economy:
“If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidise it”.
It is about time we broke this cycle.
Our difficulties are bank borrowing, a complicated tax system, endless employments regulations and a planning system recently described by the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, as glacial. Small businesses are responsible for six out of 10 jobs in the UK. They are the engines of economic growth, and last week's Budget saw a series of welcome announcements, including the commitment of no new regulations on firms with fewer than 10 staff for three years, and the simplifications of the tax code. This will help to create new jobs, growth and prosperity, and I look forward to doing all I can to assist the Government in furthering this agenda.