Enterprise Bill [Lords]

Anna Soubry Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Ms Eagle]

The changes to the Act are minor, simply because they restore in real terms the original import of the Act—that minor change merely brings the Act up to date. There is no reason why any Opposition Member should worry about that change. It is aimed at a part of the rural broadband roll-out that is very important for a lot of people in rural areas, so it is wholly acceptable, certainly to the Opposition, although I am not sure whether the hon. Gentleman is opposing his own Front Benchers on this issue.

[The Minister for Small Business, Industry and Enterprise (Anna Soubry)]

We are trying to find out what you would do.

[Ms Eagle]

I am saying what we will do. We support this part of the Bill, because it makes a minor extension that just restores the intention of the original Act.

There are many modest measures in the Bill with which we agree; indeed, the Government resisted many of them during the passage of the Deregulation Act 2015, the Consumer Rights Act 2015 and the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013 in the previous Parliament, and we welcome the fact that the Government appear to have come round and accepted them now.

However, there are a number of measures in the Bill with which we are not in agreement.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ms Eagle]

The Government have spoken. They keep acting as though we know what the changes are, when we do not. They have chosen not to give us any warning that they were going to be in the Bill, not even a private tip-off, so we have to react completely in the dark. Other than what was said from the Dispatch Box, we have no idea what will be in the Bill. [Interruption.] The Minister for Small Business, Industry and Enterprise chunters away from the Front Bench, saying that these changes are minor, but we do not know whether they are minor until she publishes them and we read them. If she would like to publish them now, we can have a five-minute break, go out and read them and check whether she is telling us the truth.

[Anna Soubry]

The hon. Lady was obviously present during BIS orals, so she heard me say, for example, that this is about devolving power down to a local level. [Interruption.] Hang on! Chill out! Calm down! It therefore gives local authorities the power to decide whether they will extend Sunday opening hours to a very small number of shops. That is what it is about. It is not some huge, major measure. I would be the first to say that this is about the devolution of power. I think the hon. Lady has a problem with letting people at a local level make the decisions in the interests of local people.

[Ms Eagle]

I have no problem whatsoever with letting people decide locally, but it is not for a Government Minister to tell the Opposition what their attitude to something should be before we have actually seen what the proposed clauses say. The Government are asserting, even as we speak, that the public sector exit payments are all about fat cat public sector pay-offs, but we have discovered—because this has actually been printed in the Bill—that those fat cat payments apply to people on £25,000 a year. The right hon. Lady’s view of reality may not be the same as that of the Opposition. As a Minister, she should realise that, if she wants the Opposition to take a view on something, she should publish it.

[Anna Soubry]

Does the hon. Lady accept that the exit payments will apply to only some 5% of workers, because we are talking about a redundancy payment of £94,000?

[Ms Eagle]

The provisions will affect people who earn £25,000, but who are being labelled as fat cats.

[Anna Soubry]

By you!

[Ms Eagle]

By the Secretary of State! They earn as little as £25,000 and have given their lives to long public service. We know that because the clauses have been printed. The right hon. Lady should publish her Sunday trading clauses. The Government should have published them a lot sooner, if they were going to put them in the Bill.

I can only assume that the Government chose to introduce the changes to Sunday trading at such short notice in the hope that they can bounce them through the House with minimum opposition and scrutiny. This is yet another example of them governing from the shadows. It treats the House of Commons with the utmost disrespect, and it treats the House of Lords with contempt. Given that the Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill was subject to scrutiny by a Committee of the whole House, will the Secretary of State do the same for the Sunday trading amendments that the Government will table to the Enterprise Bill? That is the least he can do in the circumstances.

Unless something else comes to light, we do not intend to oppose the Bill’s Second Reading, but we are disappointed at this legislative pudding. We are even more disappointed at the developments on Sunday trading, and we will hold this Government to account as the Bill goes through Committee.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Small Business, Industry and Enterprise (Anna Soubry)]

I congratulate everybody—and I mean everybody—who has contributed to what I believe has been a very good debate. I am going to look at the areas of contention and the particular topics in respect of which hon. Members have made good points and raised good concerns. I shall not go through all the clauses and topics in the Bill, but deal with it in the way I have suggested.

This may be a small Bill, but I think it is beautifully formed. Each part of it, each small piece, cog, wheel, nut and bolt is not perhaps in every instance beautifully and finely finished, but if we bring all of them together, it forms a wonderful small machine that is part of the bigger engine—the role of business in our economy. That is indeed what provides jobs and prosperity, and in turn the money that allows us then to provide services for everyone throughout our nation. It is an important Bill.

I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller), who rightly said that it is all about creating the right environment for business. I believe that the Bill is part of that. It is interesting that, with the exception of the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins)—others will correct me if I am wrong—it is only from Conservative Members, such as my hon. Friends the Members for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) and for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse), that we have heard the voice of business from those who have actually run businesses themselves and who, frankly, know what they are talking about.

Let me deal first with apprenticeships. We heard some good contributions, including from my hon. Friends the Members for South Ribble (Seema Kennedy) and for Warwick and Leamington (Chris White) and from the right hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint). I am afraid I had too many enterprising criminals when I was working as a criminal barrister, but I look forward to the contribution that she will undoubtedly make in Committee. I pay particular tribute—[Interruption.] There is a lot of chuntering going on.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. The right hon. Lady is right: there is a lot of chuntering, and if it gets any louder, I will have to stop it.

[Anna Soubry]

Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker. We do not like chuntering, do we?

I stopped speaking because I wanted to pay a big tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi) and my hon. Friend the Minister for Skills for their outstanding work on the advancement of apprenticeships, which will help us to go forward and achieve our goal. We are seeing a golden age of apprenticeships—a revolution in apprenticeships—and people will now appreciate their full worth. That is what the Bill seeks to achieve by enshrining the true value of apprenticeships in law.

I can tell my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Amanda Milling) that there will be a national advertising campaign to promote apprenticeships in the next few months. That is just a part of the great work that has been done by my hon. Friends the Member for Stratford-on-Avon and the Minister for Skills.

In relation to public bodies, I pay tribute to my own borough council under Labour: a record number of apprenticeships were created in the borough. The number rose to 20 over two years, and now, under a Conservative administration, the target is 20 each year. If we can do that in Broxtowe, other local authorities can do it.

I pay tribute to the work of my hon. Friend the Member for Burton (Andrew Griffiths), and, indeed, that of the hon. Members for Leeds North West (Greg Mulholland) and for Chesterfield, in relation to the pubs code. All three made important points today. We must get the balance right between allowing pub companies to invest in our great pubs and securing fairness for tenants. That is what I want us to do, and I believe that we are well on the way to doing it.

Let me now deal with the issue of Sunday trading. I can tell the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) —my friend—that we will introduce legislation to improve the terms and conditions of people who do not wish to work on Sundays. We think it important to protect those workers, so that will be part and parcel of our changes in Sunday trading laws. I must stress, however, that this is not mandatory. We want to give councils the power—a power that many Labour councils want—to make local decisions that are based on the needs of their own people and businesses. If a local authority does not consider such action suitable, it will not take it. As we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington (Victoria Borwick), an authority might want to extend the hours of a garden centre to suit that particular business. It is a question of fine-tuning.

Let me repeat to the hon. Member for Strangford that working on Sundays is not mandatory, any more than it is mandatory to go shopping. Sundays will still be special for those who want to keep them special.

[Toby Perkins]

Will the Minister give way?

[Anna Soubry]

I will give way briefly, but I will take no more interventions after that.

[Toby Perkins]

What the Minister is saying, and what she is setting out to do in regard to Sunday trading, is entirely wrong, but something even more important is happening here. For the first time ever, workers’ rights are being devolved, and will become different in different areas.

[Anna Soubry]

They will not be devolved. Let me make that absolutely clear. We will introduce legislation for all work that will affect any worker working on a Sunday—

[Ms Angela Eagle]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. The Minister is spending time talking about provisions that no one but her has seen, because they are not in the Bill. How can that be in order?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

The Minister can choose what she wants to talk about as long as it is related to the Bill. When it is not related to the Bill, I will stop her.

[Anna Soubry]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I specifically wanted to deal with those points, because I think that the hon. Member for Strangford made them better than anyone else.

In the six minutes that remain, I want to talk about the small business commissioner. We heard an excellent speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly) and contributions from the hon. Member for Livingston (Hannah Bardell), my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke, my hon. Friends the Members for Bath (Ben Howlett), for Havant (Mr Mak), for Aldridge-Brownhills and for South Ribble, my hon. and learned Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Lucy Frazer), my hon. Friend the Member for Derby North (Amanda Solloway), the hon. Member for Chesterfield, the right hon. Member for Don Valley, the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright) and others.

I just want to say about the small business commissioner that many will say “Well, it sounds like a good idea, but he or she won’t have the teeth and the powers.” It is important to understand that the many businesses that rightly complain about late payment already have a contract with the other party, so the late payment is a breach of that contract’s terms and conditions and they do therefore have redress to law, as Members have outlined. However, the following good point was made: this is not just about the cost of going to litigation; it is also about the relationship between the smaller business and the other party and it not wanting to undermine that relationship. There is, therefore, a reluctance to go to court. Those people can go to the SBC to make their complaint, but it would be wrong to put that person in some quasi-judicial role given that there is an existing legal relationship between the two parties in that instance and they can go to law.

The other sort of case that we anticipate will interest the SBC is when a small business is in effect making a complaint before a contract has been signed about terms that are being put on them by the other party. They will be able to go to the SBC and raise that complaint.

What happens in Australia has been mentioned. I have spoken to the SBC in Australia and have learned a great deal from his wise words. He does not have any greater powers—[Interruption.] No, he doesn’t—not in relation to late payments. What he does do, however, and what he has achieved by virtue of the huge credibility he brings to the post and the huge respect he has, is change the culture, and that at its heart is what we seek to do. We want to change the culture so those bigger businesses understand that this is no longer acceptable, regardless of whether they put it into their Ts and Cs or just in practice do not pay small businesses in a reasonable length of time. This is about changing culture. That is what we seek to achieve, and I am confident we can do that.

I just want to finish off by dealing with exit payments. I want to say a few words to the hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) and my hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar). I say to the hon. Gentleman that Wales will get the benefit of the extra powers we intend to put in. I pay credit to him for the work he and the Secretary of State are going to do to make sure we extend superfast broadband throughout the whole of the UK—and to make sure everybody can get a proper mobile phone signal, too. That is absolutely critical.

On public sector exit payments, I want to say the following. On Magnox workers, I am more than happy to meet any Members to discuss this important issue in relation to them. On NHS workers, I specifically asked for that work to be done and my officials tell me that no NHS employee on £47,000 will be affected—[Interruption.] Opposition Members say that is not true; I do not know whether they have done the work on it, but my officials have. I am absolutely determined that we will look at these figures when we go into Committee. We will get that evidence and we will make sure that the figures are put to everybody so that we all know the real situation. What we do know is that there is a very small number of workers in the public sector on about £25,000 who could be caught by this—[Hon. Members: “Ah!”] But those are extremely rare conditions. We will do this in Committee. I urge everybody to vote for the Bill.

Question put, That the Bill be now read a Second time.