Business and Planning Bill

Baroness Neville-Rolfe Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 6th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I very much welcome this Bill relating to the promotion of economic recovery and growth. It follows the imaginative package announced by the Chancellor in March—the furlough scheme, the VAT and rates holiday, various loans and grants and then, later, the addition of the bounce-back loans, which feature in the Bill, when a further boost was essential. I very much look forward to the Chancellor’s further package before we discuss the Bill in Committee next week. With the prospect of mass unemployment, we need some more imaginative thinking—for example, as I have been suggesting, a cut in employers’ national insurance.

Like others, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Greenhalgh on his speech and indeed on all his interventions in the House so far. I very much look forward to engaging with my noble friend on the more wide-ranging planning changes, as those can play an important part in future growth. However, they are not the purpose of this Bill. Indeed, I worry that too many of today’s interventions have called for regulatory measures rather than for the opening up that we need to get the economy to perk up. The measures in the Bill are temporary, so we need positive suggestions to that end, as we have heard from my noble friends Lord Wei and Lord Lansley and, on some aspects, the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, and as we have just heard from the noble Lord, Lord Bhatia.

I turn to the Bill itself. It should be easier to deal with than the corporate insolvency Bill because it contains essentially temporary provisions. However, I want to understand the sunset provisions. For example, Clause 21 contains an end date of 31 December 2020 but also a provision for a Secretary of State to make regulations substituting a later date. Clause 25 allows him or her to

“make transitional, transitory or saving provision in connection with the expiry of any provision of this Act”.

This legislation is not being adequately costed or scrutinise for permanent effect, so I am not convinced that we should leave so much power with the Executive. The Bill should lapse automatically on a certain date or dates, with new primary legislation enacted as need be.

As the House knows, I take a particular interest in the prosperity of retail, where I worked for many years, as well as in smaller businesses, which have been a dynamic and economic success, much envied in Europe. Both sectors are having a torrid time, but they have also played a heroic part in this crisis; I would single out the food stores, the distribution drivers and the postal workers, all of whom have worked through the pandemic despite the obvious risks and pioneered safer ways of working.

As always, I am grateful to the FSB for its good briefing and to the British Retail Consortium. The latter has raised two concerns on which I would appreciate the Minister’s thoughts. The first is the introduction, at least for the period of the crisis, of digital age estimation and verification. There is a separate telephone app for age verification that is well-established in other countries. It requires registration, but it means there is no need for the customer to show paper ID or to remove any mask, with all the risks those entail. It can be used in some shops already, but not for alcohol or in pubs, because the Home Office has, allegedly—although this surprises me—dragged its feet.

With cities opening up and city centre stores at risk of violence, the BRC is also concerned about the slow progress of a response to a call for evidence on violence against shop workers. I wonder whether my noble friend the Deputy Leader could use his charms to encourage progress on those two matters before we reach Committee.

Finally, I have a much wider concern: that in this crisis, we have given too much weight to medical matters relating to Covid and not quite enough to the negative impact of the measures taken. This extends from cancer treatment to the closure of swathes of the economy. On a normal economic analysis of the kind now being done at Imperial College, the balance in favour of Covid treatment and prevention away from future growth and recovery has gone too far. In due course, we will be criticised by our children for taking away their prosperity. Luckily, the Bill takes some small steps in exactly the right direction.