Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill

Anne Marie Morris Excerpts

Wednesday 16th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Anne Marie Morris (Newton Abbot) (Con)]

I congratulate the Government on the Bill, which is an excellent piece of work. Having been a champion of small businesses and particularly micro-businesses for many years, I am very pleased to see it making its way on to the statute book. Small businesses represent 96% of businesses as a whole, and they provide 50% of the jobs in this country and 30% of private sector turnover. In my four minutes, I clearly cannot deal with the whole content of the Bill, but given that so much has already been said, I will make a few comments.

On late payment, the Government’s suggestion of a reporting requirement on payment performance is a good first step. However, we all feel a little frustrated and feel that there needs to be a bit more stick. The prompt payment code has inevitably had a very good start. The challenge is that, because compliance is not mandated, it has not delivered all the results that we want. Perhaps listed companies—whether fully listed or listed on the alternative investment market—could be required to comply.

We might also consider having an adjudicator, as with the pubs. If there is a persistent defaulter who breaches the prompt payment code five or six times, that could be brought to the attention of the adjudicator. An adjudicator could also look at the public sector. Although central Government have done a good job of reducing payment periods, local government has not been quite so good. An adjudicator might be able to improve that situation.

The Government have done a grand job on regulatory reform. One-click incorporation is being pushed forward. I suggest that, although incorporation is the goal for many organisations, limited liability is often what they seek. We should consider having limited liability for sole traders. That has been looked at before, but I suspect that the people who were consulted were those with, might I say, a prejudicial interest.

The defining of micro-businesses and small businesses is long overdue. I commend the Government for doing that, but would issue a note of caution. In my view, the EU definition is not the right definition. The all-party parliamentary group for micro-businesses produced a report in 2012 that showed that research from America, Australia and other parts of Europe suggested that many countries had moved the definition of micros from 10 or fewer employees to five or fewer. That must be reviewed carefully.

The steps that the Government are taking on public procurement are first-class. However, the problem has not been fully addressed. The problem for small businesses, on top of the administrative burden and the red tape, is that those who are seeking to procure often look for an organisation that can supply five, six or 10 different products. Many small businesses provide only one product, which shuts them out of the opportunity altogether. That needs to be looked at.

I will not comment on the pub code, because the Government have done a first-class job with their proposals. Many of the proposals on employment law are also well drafted, particularly the changes to zero-hours contracts.

I would like to know where we have got to with the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013, which also looked at tribunals. It tried to minimise the number of people who go through the tribunal system by requiring people who want to go to tribunal to talk to ACAS as a first step or say that they are not interested. It also introduced settlement agreements. We must ask how successful those have been, because this is the last opportunity for the Government to fix anything that has not quite worked in that piece of legislation.

This is an excellent Bill and I commend it to the House. As a champion of all micro-businesses, I am sure that they will be very pleased about what the Government are endeavouring to do.