Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete in Education Settings
Alberto Costa Excerpts(1 year, 3 months ago)
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Gillian Keegan
We have done three building and conditions surveys, plus we have had the RAAC surveying and questionnaire programme, so we know a lot more than anybody has ever known, including everybody on the Opposition Benches.
Alberto Costa (South Leicestershire) (Con)
It seems that the risk of RAAC being present in two of my South Leicestershire schools is very low, but as yet it has not been ruled out. Would my right hon. Friend please confirm that she and her team in the Department for Education will work as fast as is reasonably possible to ensure that the schools affected are given the information they need to inform parents?
Gillian Keegan
I am not sure of the status of those two schools, but if their questionnaires have been provided and they are on the suspected RAAC list, there will be surveyors going in in the next couple of weeks. At that point, if they are identified as having RAAC, we will immediately take action similar to what we did last week with the 104. Parents will be informed immediately if that action has to be taken, but, as I said earlier, two thirds of schools that are suspected do not turn out to have RAAC.
Oral Answers to Questions
Alberto Costa Excerpts(5 years, 3 months ago)
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Nick Gibb
I know the hon. Gentleman has been concerned about those inspections, and he met Ofsted’s north-west regional director. Ofsted is directly accountable to Parliament, and the vast majority of inspections go without incident. Ofsted has a quality assurance process and a complaints procedure to deal with those rare instances where it does not go according to plan.
Alberto Costa (South Leicestershire) (Con)
At the last Ofsted inspection, Red Hill Field Primary School was marked as good. The school is celebrating its 35-year anniversary this Friday. What message does the Minister have for that excellent school, for Mr Snelson, the headteacher, and for all the staff on their excellent work over 35 years?
Enterprise Bill [Lords]
Alberto Costa Excerpts(8 years, 10 months ago)
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Alberto Costa (South Leicestershire) (Con)
Today the Government have brought before us an exciting and much needed Bill that, if passed, will significantly and beneficially impact on enterprise in my constituency and, indeed, throughout our United Kingdom.
I would like to focus on the particular benefits brought by part 2 regulators and the business impact targets. This measure is an excellent way for the Conservative Government to help fulfil our manifesto commitments to our country by promoting a much better environment for business and enterprise to thrive.
As we have heard from my hon. Friends, Labour’s record on regulation is appalling. When last in government, Labour oversaw the creation of six new regulations every working day, and that new red tape cost British businesses billions of pounds from 1998 onwards. Indeed, Labour Members do not understand the needs of businesses—and, worse still, they appear not to want to understand those needs on the basis of what we have heard from the Opposition Benches today. Under the last Labour Government, taxes on businesses were too high, and by all accounts, Labour planned to increase the rates of national insurance.
Achieving £10 billion of regulatory savings for businesses over the course of this Parliament is a key manifesto commitment—I stood on it—of this Conservative Government. This will build on the success of the previous Government’s deregulation agenda, which itself delivered £10 billion of deregulatory savings over the course of the last Parliament.
Businesses constantly tell me and, I am sure, many Members that the actions of regulators are as at least as important as the content of legislation in determining their experience of regulation. For example—and this was mentioned earlier—according to recent business perception surveys, 46% of businesses agreed that preparing for inspections or dealing with inspectors was burdensome, 49% considered that they did not receive good enough advice from regulators to make confident investment decisions, and 73% of scale-ups thought that they would be able to grow faster if dealing with regulators were easier.
David Rutley (Macclesfield) (Con)
My hon. Friend is making a very considered speech. I agree that cutting red tape is a huge priority. We made progress in that respect during the last Parliament, and we intend to cover much further ground by means of the Bill. Does my hon. Friend agree, however, that it is also vital for us to push back regulation from the European Union, and that the European Union could learn from us? Does not Tusk’s latest announcement show that even the EU is now learning from what we are doing in this important area?
Alberto Costa
I welcome any measure that cuts inappropriate regulation, whatever the source of that regulation.
Considerable progress was made under the last Government through initiatives such as “one in, two out” to help businesses achieve regulatory compliance while not hindering growth. My own local enterprise partnership, covering Leicester and Leicestershire, served as a pilot in various initiatives to strengthen the relationship between businesses and regulators, which ranged from considering ways of improving information-sharing between regulators to working with groups such as the Federation of Small Businesses and chambers of commerce. That has been a priority, and we have seen some early successes which the Bill will undoubtedly further encourage.
According to the 2015 Leicester and Leicestershire business survey, 94% of employers saw regulators as professional and courteous, but just 49% felt that they were consulted by regulators when developing policies. [Interruption.] Opposition Members might want to listen to this. They might learn a few things about the importance of the Bill.
Those findings showed that there was considerable scope for further joint working and improvements that might be made by means of the Bill. [Interruption.] “Listen and learn” is the key today. [Interruption.] Opposition Members are more than welcome to intervene.
The Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act 2015 commits future Governments to publishing, and then reporting on, their performance against a deregulation target, the business impact target. Little has been said about that by the Members who are now chuntering from a sedentary position.
Alberto Costa
The hon. Gentleman is more than welcome to intervene and comment on its benefits if he wishes to do so.
The Bill will extend the business impact target to include the actions of statutory regulators, and will ensure that they must carry out assessments of the economic impacts on business of any changes in their regulatory practices or policies. That will provide a wider focus for the Government to reduce regulatory burdens on businesses, thus enabling them to free up resources and boost productivity. It will ensure that there is even greater transparency in relation to the impact of regulation on business, as opposed to the opaqueness that we saw during the 13 long years of Labour misrule. It will enable regulators to contribute to the Government’s deregulation target of £10 billion of regulatory savings during the current Parliament, and—very importantly—it will give regulators more incentives to design and deliver policies that better meet the needs of British business.
Bringing the activities of regulators into the scope of the business impact target will ensure that the impact imposed on business by regulators is routinely measured and reported on—a move that was scorned by Opposition Members a matter of hours or even minutes ago. It will increase the clarity of the system, and give businesses greater assurance that any costs and benefits that are imposed on them will be thoroughly assessed. Legislating to extend the business impact target will most comprehensively achieve the increase in transparency that I have mentioned, and will bring about the reduction in burdens on businesses that Conservative Members wish to achieve. It represents not a small ambition, but a significant ambitious development of previous policies designed to improve the ways in which regulations are enforced.
This Bill will help to make sure that our United Kingdom is the best place in Europe to start and grow a business, and that people who work hard and start and run a business have the opportunity to succeed without inappropriate regulatory burdens suffocating their much needed enterprise.
Alberto Costa
No, I am going to wind-up. [Interruption.] I did offer many Members on the other side of the House the opportunity to intervene, but they chose not to do so.
This Enterprise Bill will help to promote a real reduction in red tape, which the Members opposite simply do not seem to understand, and it will encourage businesses to expand and in so doing create more jobs and help people in our country thrive. That is the key to a successful Enterprise Bill. This Bill will allow British enterprise to flourish in my constituency of South Leicestershire as well as across our United Kingdom.
Caroline Flint (Don Valley) (Lab)
May I start by apologising for having to leave shortly after my contribution, but I am meeting the prisons Minister, the hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous), about enterprise in prisons and enterprising criminals—a debate about criminal entrepreneurs is for another day!
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for South Leicestershire (Alberto Costa). He made quite a big deal about how Labour does not understand the needs of business. I gently remind him that it was his Government who announced the introduction of a new national living wage, and quite a lot of concern has been expressed by small businesses about how that is going to affect them, because there has been little consultation—[Interruption.] —as my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Melanie Onn) reminds me.