Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Debate between Lord Whitty and Lord Howard of Rising

Committee stage
Thursday 23rd February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howard of Rising (Con)]

Would the Minister agree that, as the United Kingdom has one of the best employment records in the entire world, which was never dependent upon the EU, these amendments are utterly pointless and could probably do more harm than good?

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, further to that point, even this discussion on the first amendment that we are faced with requires the Minister to withdraw some of the assertions he has made, and which his noble friend has just made again. The very fact that we are debating maternity rights which were brought in because of the European Union means that his statement that British workers do not depend on the European Union for their employment rights is made absurd. It is correct that successive British Governments have decided that they will go along with the European rights, but it was because of the European Union that we have those rights. Therefore, we need a specific exclusion from the fact that, by 31 December this year, these regulations, and many other workers’ rights regulations and related regulations, will fall automatically, without any parliamentary decision.

I would like the Minister to withdraw his assertion about European rights. He forgets his history. Why does he think that Mrs Thatcher fell out with Jacques Delors? Why does he think that John Major refused to sign the Social Chapter? Until the Labour Government came in, British workers’ rights were less than those of workers in Europe. This is an absurd assertion, as has been made clear by the debate on this very first amendment.

I have one more general point. I tried to table an early amendment which would give Parliament an alternative way of dealing with this, where we would have a Joint Committee to look in a reasoned way at the priority, the status and the need for action to change European laws. There is an amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, to do a similar thing, but we are not debating that today.

However, there must be a better way than leaving a whole tranche of European-derived law to an unknown process, ministerial decree—when they come in with their own version of the law—or simply leaving it until 31 December when the law will then disappear. This Parliament, this House, must assert a better way of dealing with this. That is clear from this amendment and from the complete absurdity of how we are dealing with the subject matter in this Bill.

Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill

Debate between Lord Whitty and Lord Howard of Rising

Wednesday 28th January 2015 Grand Committee

[Lord Howard of Rising (Con)]

My Lords, I wish to speak to Amendment 91D in this group. Its purpose is to remove uncertainty and so give smaller breweries a stable background in which to run their businesses. Helping small business is after all the purpose of the Bill. For these smaller breweries—indeed, for any pub company—to be successful in a declining market, it is essential that they make significant investment in their pubs. This necessary investment is not practical if they do not know under what rules they are operating. My noble friend mentioned changing the figure of 500 by affirmative resolution, but while change by regulation or order goes some way towards parliamentary examination it is, for practical purposes, a rubber stamp. Between 1950 and 2014, only 11 resolutions were rejected in the other place and only five in your Lordships’ House.

For that reason, if the Secretary of State can change the 500-pub definition to a different number by regulation, that will create uncertainty and severely restrict, if not halt, the investment necessary for the survival of the smaller breweries—which, by the way, generally speaking, have been increasers rather than closers of pubs. If noble Lords think that it is overpessimistic to say that investment will dry up, I remind them that under the last change in the rules governing the ownership of pubs many famous names, as my noble friend Lord Hodgson alluded to earlier, such as Whitbread, Bass, Scottish & Newcastle, Courage and Watneys have been absorbed by multinationals. It would be against the spirit of what we are trying to achieve today if a consequence was to contribute to the demise of small breweries.

Any change to the number of 500 should be subject to primary legislation. I urge the Minister to consider the amendment seriously so that those smaller breweries can continue to invest and create the prosperity necessary to maintain that part of the pub sector and help stem the decline of pubs.

[Lord Whitty]

My Lords, I have three amendments in this group which go in exactly the opposite direction of the noble Baroness’s amendments.

We could keep the question of definition to talks between now and Report. I do not want to go over the arguments that we had earlier, but to define the owners, the pubcos, to which this applies in reference solely to tied pubs runs the danger of those pubcos altering their tenancy arrangements so that they fall below the threshold. I assure the noble Lord, Lord Howard, that this provision is not intended to hit the family and small regional brewers. We know that the large companies have a range of arrangements with their tenancies and are defined by the totality of their portfolio. It is relatively easy, given the turnover of tenants, for the companies to switch from one form of tenancy to another. They would have a motivation to do so, in order to fall below a tenancy threshold related to tied accommodation alone.

This is one of the issues on which we should have further talks. It is possible that we would have a different tied-specific definition, but that would require other obligations being put on the pubcos so that they would not change the designation of their portfolio to get around this threshold. I suppose that it would be difficult to draft such clauses, but there is a real danger of them gaming this situation. We know that some companies are already contemplating breaking their structure up.

We need more talk about what the definition covers. In a sense, this is the wrong way to go about it, but I would hope that the noble Baroness would not press the amendment and would rather make it subject to the talks to which she has committed for the coming period.

Groceries Code Adjudicator Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Whitty and Lord Howard of Rising

Monday 16th July 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Whitty]

The person is not necessarily unidentified; that depends on the supplier. I know that those arguments were made in Committee and I accept that it would not be for the adjudicator to impose compensation or the level of it themselves. However, it ought to be open to the adjudicator to be able to say, “It looks as if a supplier or a number of suppliers have been disadvantaged by this practice and the issue should be referred, effectively, to the courts”. That could be part of the recommendatory powers. That is not the central issue on this group of amendments, though; they are really to remove the constraints on the Secretary of State and allow the adjudicator to have a whole range of potential financial sanctions.

[Lord Howard of Rising]

My Lords, contrary to what has been said by some this afternoon, naming and shaming is a genuine deterrent. In a cut-throat, highly competitive business such as this—reading the results of supermarket chains shows how very quickly they can go downhill from having made substantial profits—naming and shaming is a real deterrent. I also hope that the Minister will remember that the only person who actually pays those fines in the end is the consumer.