Business and Planning Bill

Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick Excerpts

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

[Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Non-Afl) [V]]

My Lords, Covid-19 has caused more disruption and damage to the world’s economies than any event in living memory. In the UK alone, millions could lose their jobs and hundreds of billions of pounds could be wiped from the economy. This pandemic is far from over. We face the risk of localised spikes and perhaps worse, causing further grief and economic instability. The future remains volatile and uncertain, so it is vital that the Government provide all possible support.

This Business and Planning Bill presents an opportunity to kick-start our economy as it emerges from lockdown. A huge amount is at stake, so it is imperative that we get the details of the legislation right. There is a lot we need to do. People want to socialise again, quite justifiably, but we need to encourage them to do so safely. This means the Bill must provide that flexibility for the licensing laws and the facilitation of fast-track planning permission for the pavement cafés. The Government’s bounce-back loans scheme is useful and has the potential to be of real help to business, but it should be more flexible and allow much easier access to funds.

There are other ways in which Ministers can provide hugely valuable support through this Bill. For instance, they are enabled to help ease the backlog in vehicle testing and driving licences for goods, passenger and public service vehicles. Steps such as providing an easement on construction working hours and on the expiry of planning approvals would also make a real difference.

Some of the provisions in this Bill extend to Northern Ireland, and in fact the Northern Ireland Assembly gives legislative consent to this Bill today.

There are certain areas, mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, that are vital to the economy and should be included. High streets have been decimated during lockdown. On one day alone last week, 6,000 jobs were lost in the retail sector. Sadly, there are many more closures to come; indeed, there is a real fear that we could return to the high levels of unemployment last seen in the 1980s. Therefore, will the Minister give us his view about including in the Bill, albeit as a temporary measure, the expansion of business improvement districts, extending the towns fund, which currently relates to 101 towns, and rethinking permitted development rights as well as commercial rates? Perhaps he will write to me if he cannot answer those points when he winds up.

I understand that the Chancellor will deliver a speech on the economy on Wednesday. I ask the Minister to press his colleagues in the Treasury for the inclusion of fixed fiscal flexibility measures and substantial job creation plans. In the medium term, we must also draw up detailed plans for the regeneration of our town centres, supported by the Government.

I support the provisions in the Bill, but feel that there are opportunities for other areas, including the retail sector, to be included, because they are a vital part of business, a vital part of planning and a vital part of the economy.

Business and Planning Bill

Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 14th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Hain for moving this amendment and I agree with everything that he said in support of it. I shall add just one point—the essential modesty of the amendment.

Last month, 30 June marked the 70th anniversary of the ratification by the United Kingdom of Convention No. 98 of the International Labour Organization, one of the two most fundamental conventions in international labour law. It has not merely been expressly ratified by no fewer than 167 nations but is also considered to be part of customary international law. Article 4 of the convention calls on ratifying states to take measures

“to encourage and promote the full development and utilisation of machinery for voluntary negotiation between employers or employers’ organisations and workers’ organisations, with a view to the regulation of terms and conditions of employment by means of collective agreements.”

Article 6 of the 1961 European Social Charter—of the Council of Europe, not the EU—was ratified by the UK 48 years ago and makes similar provision.

In addition to compliance with domestic law, the rule of law requires states to comply with such ratified provisions of international law. As the late Lord Bingham put it in his well-known public lecture on the rule of law in 2006, the existing principle of the rule of law

“requires compliance by the state with its obligations”

in international law—the law that, whether deriving from treaty or international custom and practice, governs the conduct of nations. I do not think that that proposition is contentious.

This modest amendment does not ask, as the UK’s binding international legal obligations do, for machinery for collective bargaining to be established in the present context. It merely asks for the Government to provide a strategy for collective co-operation. It is a point of principle shared by me and noble friends that workers should be involved in important decisions of the businesses that employ them, as that is to the mutual benefit of both, as my noble friend has just pointed out. Many such decisions will arise in relation to this Bill. For myself, I am unable to discern any rational objection to the amendment and I look forward to hearing the Minister on the subject.

[Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Non-Afl) [V]]

My Lords, I support the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Hain. It underscores the principles of the machinery for voluntary negotiation, partnership and co-operation. Surely the Minister will see fit to support it. It would encourage good work between employers and employees to ensure better productivity, better performance and better output levels, bringing benefit not only to the business and the employer but to the employees, because they would be directly involved in the decision-making.

You have only to look at the work that Unite has been doing in the whole coronavirus operation with test, track and trace. I looked at the German model of work councils, which are very much about voluntary negotiation between the employee and the employer, giving due recognition to the work of both but underscoring the principle of better output and better performance. They boost profitability, lift living standards and enhance the job prospects of all the employees directly involved.

I am very content to support this amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Hain because it would bring about better working relationships and better co-operation, which, particularly at a time of a pandemic, are urgently required.

Business and Planning Bill

Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick Excerpts

Report stage & Report stage (Hansard) & Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 20th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy (Lab) [V]]

I will speak to Amendment 4 and endorse everything that my noble friend Lord Hain said in his powerful speech in support of it. As he pointed out, the striking thing about this amendment is its modesty. All it requires is consultation of relevant trade unions and businesses over the granting of pavement licences. As was pointed out in Committee, for 70 years and three weeks since it ratified ILO Convention 98 on 30 June 1950, the United Kingdom has voluntarily assumed the obligation to encourage and promote collective bargaining. The United Kingdom fortified its commitment to collective bargaining when it ratified a similar obligation in Article 6 of the European Social Charter in 1972.

The need for collective bargaining, particularly at sectoral level, was brought home when we learned of the appalling conditions and pitiful rates of pay—often less than half the national minimum wage—in the sweatshops of the Leicester garment industry. We saw that need again in the agricultural sector, when an outbreak of Covid-19 among workers at a vegetable farm revealed the appalling living and working conditions among the workers there. We know that, in agriculture, conditions and pay are so bad that it was found necessary to fly pickers in from Romania earlier this season, since British workers, even faced with unemployment and the terrors of universal credit, were not prepared to put up with them.

The answer in these and other sectors was explained long ago in the other place by Sir Winston Churchill, who in 1909 introduced legislation to make sectoral collective bargaining mandatory. I will read three sentences from his speech that day:

“It is a serious national evil that any class of His Majesty’s subjects should receive less than a living wage in return for their utmost exertions.”


He continued:

“where you have what we call sweated trades, you have no organisation, no parity of bargaining, the good employer is undercut by the bad, and the bad employer is undercut by the worst”.

He concluded by saying:

“where those conditions prevail you have not a condition of progress, but a condition of progressive degeneration.”—[Official Report, Commons, 28/4/1909; col. 388.]

Hence, the Trade Boards Act 1909 was introduced and passed.

My noble friend Lord Hain referred to Roosevelt and the New Deal. Part of that was the National Industrial Recovery Act 1933, which introduced sectoral collective bargaining widely in the United States. It is in these circumstances that I stress the modesty of the amendment my noble friend proposes today. There can be no sensible reason not to adopt it, and I commend it to the Minister.

[Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Non-Afl) [V]]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, in supporting the amendment put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Hain. This is not only a very sensible and modest amendment; it will provide a new framework for co-operation between businesses and employees, as the noble Lord said. Why not allow employees to have a say over the implementation of pavement licences, as they will be directly impacted upon and charged with the responsibility of ensuring that—shall we say—the letter and spirit of the law is adhered to?

Employees have discharged many responsibilities during the whole Covid pandemic. However, there is absolutely no doubt—and there is evidence-based research to prove—that when employees, employers and businesses co-operate, it boosts performance, production and profitability, lifts living standards and enhances job prospects. We can look to Germany and the role of work councils, which we talked about last week when considering a similar amendment in Committee.

I have no hesitation in supporting this amendment in my name and those of the noble Lords, Lord Hain, Lord Hendy and Lord Monks. I commend it to your Lordships’ House and ask the Minister to give dutiful consideration to accepting it.

[Lord Shipley (LD) [V]]

My Lords, now that we have reached Report stage, I remind the House that I am a vice-president of the Local Government Association. I shall be brief. My name is attached to Amendment 20, which is part of a group concerned with safety and accessibility for all who use the pavement. At previous stages of the Bill, I have emphasised the need to set clear and enforceable rules on the use of pavements—and I prefer conditions to guidance.

The Government’s changes may well be a step forward, as the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond, has explained, but improvements could still be made. Amendment 20 would help to achieve these, and I hope that the Minister will explain how the Government’s approach will deliver the degree of certainty we are looking for to enable our pavements to be accessible for all.