Amendment of the Law

Adrian Bailey Excerpts

Thursday 24th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Vince Cable]

Let me press on a little first, and then I will take an intervention.

In future, growth and jobs will come from the private sector, and in particular from small-scale business. Taken in conjunction with the trade White Paper to which I have referred, the Budget’s commitment to lower and stable corporation tax gives the strong signal that we are open for business and we warmly welcome inward investors. Growth and jobs also depend on small companies, which provided a giant proportion of the 300,000 additional jobs created in the private sector in the past six months, and they will be helped by the Budget’s extension of small company business rate relief and cuts in small company corporation tax.

[Mr Adrian Bailey (West Bromwich West) (Lab/Co-op)]

On inward investment, this Administration’s “ The Plan for Growth” states

“the Government will provide a bespoke service to key inward investors, giving them direct access to UK ministers and speedy resolution of bureaucratic obstacles to investment”.

Does the right hon. Gentleman not think that that could leave the Government open to rather difficult situations with foreign investors, and how does he think British businessmen will feel when they see inward investors getting priority access to Ministers that they do not enjoy?

[Vince Cable]

I would have thought that Opposition Members who want the economy to flourish and new jobs in their constituencies welcomed the fact that I and other Ministers spend a lot of our time talking to potential inward investors. That is good not only for them but for the British companies that then become part of their supply chain and whose confidence is reinforced.

Especially for small businesses, growth requires the Government not to put unnecessary obstacles in the way. When we searched the archives, we discovered that we had inherited a stock of 21,800 regulations and that the last Government were responsible for roughly 10,000 of them. Rather sad people like me who have spent some of the best years of our political lives in Statutory Instrument Committees will have seen all of that happening.

We have taken action to stop the gold-plating of EU regulations, to ensure that every new regulation is matched by the value of an “out”, and to mandate sunset clauses. We have launched a reform of the expensive and time-consuming tribunal system, and we have injected common sense into Health and Safety Executive inspections. The Budget confirmed the statement I made last week that there will be a three-year moratorium on new regulation affecting micro-businesses with fewer than 10 employees.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Adrian Bailey (West Bromwich West) (Lab/Co-op)]

As Chair of the Select Committee on Business, Innovation and Skills, I wish to address my remarks to the so-called plan for growth. It is fair to say that I share with many people a sense of bafflement that the plan was published in the context of a Budget that shows that this year’s projected growth rates are lower than last year’s. That makes me wonder how a plan for growth works within the Government’s overall policies. This is the first plan for growth that I have ever known to predict a drop in the growth rate.

The plan is conspicuously devoid of references to jobs. If we have a plan for growth, we should reasonably expect an element of job creation to be included. The private sector is supposed to be mopping up those cut from the public sector as a result of cuts in public spending, and we ought reasonably to be able to expect to see how the plan deals with that.

The problem is that the plan incorporates a series of micro-measures. I approve of some and would not object to others, but they are intended to deal with a macro-economic programme that fundamentally undermines their objectives. The statistics have been reeled out several times, but the most important one is that the Government, in trying to keep interest rates down, have a fiscal policy that includes VAT increases. Those push inflation up, therefore increasing the chances that interest rates will go up. That could fundamentally damage the potential for growth in our economic capacity.

I welcome some elements of the plan, not least because some, such as the export credit insurance measures, were recommended by my Committee. I have to hand it to the Government, because I pushed for those when I was a Government Member, but I did not make much progress. At least on the surface, those measures address some of the issues that the manufacturing industry raises. I do not know whether they will be successful, but they are a step in the right direction.

Similarly, the creation of a creative industry council addresses a gap in the recognition that the creative industries play in exports and employment. My churlish quibble might be that among the 32 or so industrial ambassadors who promote our industries abroad there is not a representative of the creative industries. Given the huge export market of our creative industries, and in the light of some of the issues involving IPT abroad in particular, I would ask the Government to consider that point in order to reinforce the measures they have already taken.

Many of the objectives and plans of other Departments cut across what the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills is trying to do. We are just recovering—I hope—from the damage that the visa issue has inflicted on our export potential and ability to attract bright research students and undergraduates into our universities. All the feedback that the Select Committee received during its recent visit to China demonstrated that in the country that will be the economic driver of the world economy over the next 30 years, that issue has given the impression that Britain is not open for business. It is too early to say whether the measures announced on Tuesday will address that problem, but the initial indications from universities are that they will go some way towards doing so. However, damage has been done that is fundamentally at odds with all the objectives incorporated in the plan.

[Mr Binley]

I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman has found space in his speech to make the point about visas. I had the good fortune, owing to the sad occurrence that happened to the Chairman of the Select Committee, to lead that delegation to China, and I want to impress on the House how many people in both the British and the Chinese business community made the same point. This is a really important issue, because they think that Britain is closed for business. We need to change that perception. Does he agree that the Home Secretary needs to do more to ensure that the message gets through loud and clear in China?

[Mr Bailey]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. For personal reasons, I could not join the Committee’s visit to China. However, he put those proposals to me forcefully, and I have spent the morning with the appropriate Ministers pressing that very point, because a lot of damage has been done. We need to rectify it if we are to realise any of the potential in the document.

On the localism agenda, noises were made in the Budget about improving planning for local businesses. Despite the fact, however, that the Localism Bill places planning priorities in the hands of local communities and neighbour planners, the local organisations set up by the Government—the local enterprise partnerships—have no defined role in that. I do not understand how we can have a legal process for devising planning programmes locally without incorporating the representatives of the local business community. There is enormous concern among the business community about the potential damage that that could cause.

[Martin Horwood]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Bailey]

I am sorry but I am not taking any more interventions, because a lot of Members want to speak.

There are a number of measures that in themselves might be good, but which I do not think address the scale of the problem created by the Government’s macro- economic policy. First, research and development tax credits are very welcome. Business has been pushing for them, particularly in high-quality manufacturing, but at the end of the day they will affect only a few thousand businesses. They are very welcome but will not in themselves transform the economic landscape. Entrepreneur reliefs are also welcome, but they affect only a few hundred people. National insurance holidays for start-ups were announced some time ago, but so far only some 1,500 of the 400,000 that it was thought would apply have done so. The Government need to look at that again.

I have mixed feelings about enterprise zones. There will be one in my area, which I very much hope will work—I will certainly be working with the black country business community to ensure that it does. However, the reality is that enterprise zones are a recycled policy from the 1980s, which was not even very successful then. Indeed, those fears were expressed yesterday by the hon. Member for Chichester (Mr Tyrie), the Conservative Chair of the Treasury Committee. If the policy is to succeed, we have to prevent existing businesses from relocating just to pay less tax, while not necessarily employing more people. I am concerned that we may end up trying to prevent that by incorporating a lot of regulations that will defeat the purpose of having enterprise zones in the first place.

Although there are some measures in the plan that are good, they are not sufficient to address the core problem of the macro-economic policy that undermines them. They are hot on rhetoric, but they will not deliver very much, I am afraid—although my Committee will be probing and supporting those that can.