Enterprise Bill [Lords]

Debate between Anna Soubry and Toby Perkins

Tuesday 2nd February 2016 Commons Chamber

[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—

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Anna Soubry and Toby Perkins

Tuesday 30th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Anna Soubry]

I take a firm view that it is absolutely scandalous when people do not honour the terms and conditions of their contract and pay late. That is not acceptable, particularly in the modern world. I hear terrible stories about supermarkets; one can only imagine what would happen if someone went shopping on a Saturday and then said at the checkout, “I think I’ll settle my bill in about 120 days.” Obviously they would be told that it was not acceptable, and it is not acceptable for large businesses to treat smaller businesses in that way. That is why we take the problem so seriously.

[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

I very much welcome the tone that the Minister is taking, which is in sharp contrast with the feebleness of the Government’s efforts on late payments over the past five years.

Some 2,500 businesses go bust every year not because of a failed business model but simply because they have not been paid on time. Some £46 billion is now owed to UK firms, a figure that rose throughout the Government’s previous term. Will the Minister take serious action, and does she agree that the last Government’s actions were inadequate? What message will she send to businesses that do not pay on time about the actions that the Government will take?

[Anna Soubry]

I hope that I have sent a strong message. I could not be clearer—it is completely unacceptable. [Interruption.] There is no need to add extra regulatory burdens. The law is quite clear: if two parties have come together and settled terms and conditions through a contract—forgive me for sounding like the lawyer I am, Mr Speaker—and one party then breaks the contract by not paying on time, legal action is available to the other party. As we know, the problem is that small businesses are understandably reluctant to go to law. I am exploring other options, including the continuation of naming and shaming.

Older Industrial Areas: Economic Disparities

Debate between Anna Soubry and Toby Perkins

Thursday 25th June 2015 Westminster Hall

[Anna Soubry]

Of course, I am going to deal in detail with the situation in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency and in the constituencies of all those who have spoken, with the exception of the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins). I am more than happy to write to him to tell him about the advances that have been made in the past five years in Chesterfield. I want to put this matter into context. I, too, have had to sit listening not only to a lecture, but to a rewriting of history that even the most red historians would struggle to produce.

I want to talk about the industrial communities in the alliance’s report. Since the beginning of the 1970s, UK cities have experienced an ongoing historical shift in economic orientation, driven on the one hand by a process of sustained de-industrialisation, as we have heard, and on the other by a progressive rise in service and tertiary activity. The report focuses on old industrial centres that have been slower to replace declining industries. Former industrial centres that have moved on, such as London—we often forget that London used to be a heavily industrial city, but it moved on—do not appear in the list. Therein lies an important point: there is nothing pre-ordained about past or current trends continuing into the future.

Over the past three decades, some cities have experienced positive shifts of direction, or positive turnarounds, in their differential growth paths. Oxford is an example, as are Brighton, Ipswich and London. I recognise—I am an east midlands MP, as is the hon. Member for Chesterfield—that those cities are in the south of England, and much will depend on how different older industrial centres are able to attract and develop the growth sectors of the future.

[Toby Perkins]

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

[Anna Soubry]

In a moment. I want to turn to the economy in Easington, because the hon. Member for Easington is a champion for his constituency. We have all witnessed tremendous technological change in our lifetimes. I am certainly old enough to say that, given that I come from Worksop in north Nottinghamshire where there was a coalmine. The whole town depended on the success or otherwise of the Manton colliery and surrounding collieries, so I am familiar with pits.

Industries that did not exist 20 years ago are now the most productive in the world. In the constituency of the hon. Member for Easington, this change has been more apparent than most. Since the closure of the dominant coalmine in 1993, the area has undergone a tremendous change. The legacy of coalmining is still being dealt with, but great progress has been made in remediating the industrial pollution, for example. The Durham coast, as the hon. Gentleman has told us, is now home to one of the most stunning coastal walks in the United Kingdom, with the Durham heritage coast highlighting the great natural, historical and geological interest of the area with dramatic views along the coastline and out across the North sea, framed by magnesian limestone cliffs. I have not been to the area, but I would love to go to the hon. Gentleman’s constituency, and I hope to arrange a visit.

A former slag heap is now the site of one of the country’s most dynamic retail centres, with more expansion about to start at Dalton Park.

My officials have provided me with a note about the regional growth fund’s investment in Easington. We might think from the hon. Gentleman’s speech that there had been no investment in his constituency. On the contrary, eight projects in Easington have been awarded a total of £13.4 million. They are contracted to lever in a further £81.6 million of private sector investment and to create or safeguard 1,189 jobs. I hope the hon. Gentleman will welcome such great investment of taxpayers’ money.

--- Later in debate ---

[Anna Soubry]

May I correct the hon. Lady? She said that investment has been scrapped and that the electrification of the midland main line had been abandoned, but she is absolutely wrong. [Interruption.] The hon. Lady is shaking her head, but I was in the Chamber when the Secretary of State for Transport made his announcement—I do not know whether the hon. Lady was there—and I heard exactly what he said. The process has been put on hold because of problems and failings in Network Rail. It has not been scrapped or abandoned. I remind the hon. Lady that in the 13 years of her party’s Government, 10 miles of rail were electrified in this country. We have not turned our back on investment; the £40 billion in railway improvements will continue.

Like the hon. Lady, I travel on the midland main line. Beeston station, in my constituency, lies on it. I assure her that the improvements that will be made to it mean that six more trains per hour will leave St Pancras. I am afraid that the hon. Lady is misleading people and her constituents when she says that the investment has been abandoned or scrapped.

[Toby Perkins]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way on the subject of misleading constituents. She is a representative of a marginal east midlands town, and up until the election a few weeks ago all her constituents believed the Government were going to deliver electrification of the midland main line. The truth is that, as soon as the election was over, the Government said, “Actually, we are not going ahead with it.” It may be a pause, or it may never happen. The Minister ought to be careful when she accuses other people of misleading their constituents.

[Anna Soubry]

This is not the debate we are meant to be having. I sat in the Chamber and heard what the Transport Secretary said. He made it very clear that it has not been abandoned or scrapped. He deliberately used the word “pause”.

[Toby Perkins]

Why did he not say that before the election?

[Anna Soubry]

There is no point heckling from a sedentary position. It does not advance the debate, and it does not address the complaints of the hon. Member for Easington or his constituents’ concerns. The Transport Secretary said it had been paused because of the failings of Network Rail. The improvements to the rest of the line will certainly continue.

Let me return to the constituency of the hon. Member for Easington and the fact that a new economy is beginning to grow in the wider north-east. In Peterlee alone, Caterpillar employs 1,000 people in a global centre for research and development that produces Caterpillar’s articulated truck range. Caterpillar is one of the United Kingdom’s largest heavy equipment manufacturers, with annual exports worth more than £1.5 billion. Some 85% of the United Kingdom’s production of construction equipment is for export. That is something to be championed in this place by the hon. Gentleman.

Nissan’s Sunderland plant secured £250 million of investment to manufacture the Infiniti Q30, creating up to 1,000 new jobs, 300 of which are being recruited now. It is the first new volume manufactured brand in the United Kingdom for more than 20 years. Production starts later this year. I am often reminded that more cars are now being produced in Sunderland than in the whole of Italy. The Sunderland plant currently employs just under 7,000 people on two lines, and it produced just over half a million cars in 2014—the equivalent of one in three of all cars made in the United Kingdom. The northern powerhouse regions—the north-east, the north-west, Yorkshire and the Humber—account for 25% of the UK’s automotive sector, and the work of the newly created North East Automotive Alliance should build on that strength.

Science and innovation also play a considerable part. NETPark in Sedgefield is an outstanding example of how world-class science and innovation can be partnered with great facilities and business support to continue their significant growth. It is now a significant employment site, with plans to expand and to employ more than 3,000 people in the next 10 years. Last week, NETPark announced that it has nearly 160 active collaborations with universities, illustrating its existing global position and helping to translate first-class research into products that have a real social impact and create jobs and prosperity.

The Government recognise the continuing historical challenges facing the local economy in Easington. Similar challenges face many former industrial communities across England, but the solutions to the challenges are not the same. A one-size-fits-all solution from Whitehall will not work. For Britain to prosper, every part of the country needs to fulfil its potential. That is why the Government are so committed to devolving power not only to the northern powerhouse but to great cities such as Sheffield, where the number of people in jobs has risen by some 700, and where there are two outstanding universities and £11 million-worth of technical incubators. Those are just some of the great things that are happening in Sheffield, where £23.8 million of funding is going into skills and 4,000 apprenticeships to be created by 2016. None of those things were mentioned by the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh).

I have some details about the city deal in Glasgow, in reply to the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss). I will write to the hon. Member for Neath (Christina Rees) about the investment that the Government are making in her constituency and in her part of Wales.

I will be brief, because I think I have to finish at 3 pm.

Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill

Debate between Anna Soubry and Toby Perkins

Tuesday 18th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Toby Perkins]

I am in the rather unusual position of speaking to my new clauses and in effect winding up the debate at the same time, but it is a challenge I relish.

There have been some very valuable contributions to the debate. I reiterate my admiration of the campaign on late payments led my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams). She has been a really doughty fighter on the issue, and there is no doubt that late payment is a key factor in holding back small business growth. Suppliers frequently report that it is one of the key hurdles that they face, alongside access to finance, because small businesses do not have the cash flow buffers of their large competitors.

The hon. Member for Ipswich (Ben Gummer) has been forced to leave his place—he arrived in rather a rush and left in rather a rush. Let us hope he is properly dressed when he returns. He said, rather ungenerously, that I was in a lonely position as a Labour Member in having run a small business. However, we all know that my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray) was a small business owner, as were my hon. Friends the Members for Ochil and South Perthshire (Gordon Banks) and for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson) and many of my other colleagues. And so are several of Labour’s parliamentary candidates, who we hope will be joining us here in just a few months. Conservative Members often try to create the impression that they are the only ones who have ever been in business and that all Labour Members were previously engaged in social work, school teaching or whatever they think is not worthy.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Anna Soubry)]

Nothing wrong with that.

[Toby Perkins]

Absolutely right, there is nothing wrong with that. However, the suggestion that none of my colleagues has been involved in the business world does not stand up to scrutiny

The hon. Member for Ipswich described the Bill as a thing of “magnitude”, which was an incredibly generous description. It contains a number of measures, none of which has anything particularly wrong with it, but it is not in any sense a thing of magnitude. It contains small steps in the right direction on transparency, with some positive commitments from the Government— [Interruption.] Oh, he’s back. I’ve just been talking about you. For the benefit of anyone watching on television, the hon. Member for Ipswich has returned. There are positive steps in the Bill on the role that central Government will play by paying people on time, but it is certainly not a thing of magnitude. The steps are relatively minor, and the steps that the Opposition proposed in Committee and have alluded to today on Report would have been far more significant, which was why they enjoyed such broad support.

The hon. Gentleman attempted to say, “The Federation of Small Businesses—what do they know? They might be wrong.” I believe that having more transparency would be a significant step, so he was wrong to say that. Many owners of the 2,500 businesses a year that go bust as a result of not being paid on time will think so, too. It is important to get on record the full scale of the problem that we are highlighting, and to reiterate some of the statistics that my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth gave. Figures published by Bacs reveal that Britain’s small businesses now carry a burden of £39.4 billion in overdue payment.

East Midlands Ambulance Service

Debate between Anna Soubry and Toby Perkins

Monday 21st January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Anna Soubry]

No, the Minister is not saying that she is going to get rid of them; what I am saying is that I take the view—as the hon. Gentleman does—that targets are not particularly improving services. I think there is a case for re-examining targets, and I hope he would join me in saying to the ambulance service, “Let’s look again at these targets in the NHS to see whether they’re doing the job we want them to do,” because it is precisely because of these targets that elderly people in my constituency have been lying on floors for up to four hours while ambulances have to go to meet a target.

[Toby Perkins]

The hon. Lady seems to be saying that the ambulance service is so focused on targets that it is incapable of recognising that leaving an old lady lying on the floor for four hours is reprehensible and appalling. She is letting the ambulance service off tremendously lightly to suggest that that is reasonable.

[Anna Soubry]

I am not saying that it is reasonable at all. What I am saying is that this was the system introduced under the last Labour Administration— a Government whom the hon. Gentleman supported. These are the precise consequences of that system; it is the perversion of that system that has led us to a situation in which targets have to be hit. I can assure hon. Members that I explored this matter with Mr Milligan, and an elderly lady lying on the floor with a suspected fractured hip does not fall into the category of an emergency life-threatening situation. These are not definitions imposed by this Government; these are the consequences of the 13 years of the previous Administration. I take the view that the situation needs urgent review, and I will certainly be making that recommendation in the Department that we need to look again at the ambulance service.

Living Standards

Debate between Anna Soubry and Toby Perkins

Wednesday 30th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Anna Soubry]

I am more than happy to give way in a moment to the hon. Lady whose constituency is next to mine in Nottingham.

What people do not do—they recognise this if they are responsible—is to borrow more. If they have reached the maximum on their credit card or their overdraft, they must pull in their horns, live within their means, and cut their expenditure to match their income. Opposition Members struggle with that concept, because they never practised it when in government. That is why we have an appalling level of debt and, worst of all, an appalling level of deficit.

[Toby Perkins]

The first thing the hon. Lady seems to be suggesting is that the national debt is a brand new concept. The country has always had a national debt. The reality is that until 2008, her party supported our spending plans. The national debt fell between 1997 and 2007 under the Labour Government. She is talking as though the issue is brand new, but the reality is that a global economic crisis caused the scale of the deficit, and she must take that into account.