Enterprise Bill [ Lords ] (Seventh sitting)

Alan Brown Excerpts

Thursday 25th February 2016 Public Bill Committees

We tabled the amendment, which would exempt those companies from the Bill. If the Minister has another way of guaranteeing that they will be exempted, we will be interested to hear that. Otherwise, I ask her to listen to the strong and powerful case made by those private sector workers and agree to the exemption to exit payments caps for companies listed in new schedule 3.

[Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)]

I thought the hon. Member for Cardiff West set out the logic behind the amendment very well and I agree with all the comments he made. As he said, we have all received representations on this issue; in fact, there was the feel of a 38 Degrees campaign at one point, but that showed the strength of feeling. These are workers who are getting hurt by the law of unintended consequences again.

As has been said, it is middle-income workers—long-serving workers—who are encouraged to stay on site, in a privatised company, to remain there and do this very important work of decommissioning, which obviously has an end date that signifies the end of their work. So it is only right that they should be able to pick up the pension accrual that they expected to get.

If we look back in history, we see that this is about Government striking a commercial deal to privatise a company. The company knows the workload that it is going to get, so it knows its commercial return. Years down the line, these workers should not be the victim of a Government change in policy, when, in fact, the company has managed to pick up the profit it was due over the years. That is very important.

These workers have not had a say in this process. They probably did not want to be privatised in the first place and they should not have their terms and conditions changed further down the line. I certainly support the amendment.

[Anna Soubry]

We need to remind ourselves, of course, that the Government have been clear that ending six-figure payments should apply to all public sector organisations, with few exceptions. Of course, it is the taxpayer who picks up the cost of exit payments and employees who have specialist skills should not automatically be exempt.

I was a little troubled by the contribution from the hon. Member for Wakefield, and not because I disagreed with her for one moment about the dreadful accident the day before yesterday at Didcot and the subsequent fatalities. It is undoubtedly the case that many people do dangerous jobs. I am reminded, of course, of all those who work in the fire and rescue service; we often forget that the fire brigades provide the rescue service as well. They do incredibly dangerous work, not only when they are fighting fires but when they are rescuing people. Although it is extremely rare, if it ever happens, that we make firefighters redundant, nevertheless they are also included in this new provision. I do not think that the fact that someone does a dangerous job should in some way exempt them.

The list of exempt organisations will be set out in the regulations, not in the Bill itself, and of course they will need the approval of both Houses of Parliament. The guidance accompanying the regulations will set down the criteria that Ministers, or those who have been delegated the responsibility, must consider in decisions to relax the cap. In other words, there are exemptions that can be made, but they will be determined in a list that, as I say, will require the approval of both Houses.

Regulations relaxing the cap can apply to individual cases and to groups of individuals, to cater for cases where Ministers may wish to consider organisational cases for relaxing the cap. So there is already a mechanism in place for organisations to be considered for exemption. Therefore, the amendment is unnecessary.

The regulations implementing the cap will be in force from October 2016 at the very earliest. However, as I think I have explained—it has certainly been explained in correspondence, but now I will make it very clear again—Magnox employees who are in the current redundancy programme and due to exit by September 2016 will not—repeat, will not—be caught by the cap, and the cap will not affect the core terms of the pension scheme available to Nuclear Decommissioning Authority staff, in other words Magnox employees, such as the retirement age or the basis on which their pensions accrual rate is set.

The hon. Member for Cardiff West used a particular example, of course, from somebody who had quite properly written in, which is absolutely the right thing to do. In relation to that point, I will say that I have indeed had meetings with MPs. I have not met the unions, not because I have any difficulty in meeting unions, but only because—unfortunately—my diary is pretty hectic.

However, I particularly made the point when I met the MPs, and I have made it clear to the unions by way of a letter, that people should please use their MPs to make full representations to me. As we all know, in this place Members can lobby a Minister in a corridor, or anywhere we bump into each other. That is the quickest and easiest way, but it is not a slight on the unions. I have specifically said to Members of Parliament, “Get back to them, and tell them about our meeting. Use your good self to communicate through.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Alan Brown]

The hon. Gentleman spoke about the Minister’s disappointing response. Does he agree with me that one aspect of that response was that firefighters would be affected by the provision on exit payments? Is that not an illustration of what is wrong with this whole premise? They are anything but fat cats.

[Kevin Brennan]

It is. In fairness to the Minister, I do not think that she was saying that they were, but that is the language that the Secretary of State has used and that is the headline that they seek with this kind of policy making by headline. They put things in the Bill that are meant to get them a headline in the Daily Mail and The Sun. That is what it is all about, fundamentally. It is all about political positioning: “We are against these public sector fat cats.” But the reality, when we lift the stone and look underneath that proposition, is that some pretty ugly stuff is wriggling around underneath the stone. There is an example of that in the debate that we are having today. Hard-working people are being betrayed by their Government. They would have made very different assumptions, as my hon. Friends have pointed out, about what this policy meant when they read their Daily Mail and read the headline and even when they read the Conservative party manifesto, because—