Universal Postal Service

Brian Binley Excerpts

Thursday 17th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Brian Binley (Northampton South) (Con)]

I bring the quiet voice of the other party of the coalition.

I congratulate the hon. Member, and my friend, for North Ayrshire and Arran (Katy Clark), on securing the debate. I also thank the Backbench Business Committee. This is a timely debate, one that those on the Front Bench would do very well to listen to. There were some deep concerns when we supported this measure and I am sad to say that some of them have reared their heads earlier than we might have thought. I therefore agree wholeheartedly that we need action and a review very quickly indeed. I hope this debate will prompt the regulator to pursue that review.

The starting point of this debate is my belief in fair competition. That was one of the reasons I decided, in the first place, to support the original move to privatise the Post Office. However, fair competition does of course have parameters.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Jo Swinson)]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way. I think it might be helpful to correct that point. The Post Office has absolutely not been privatised. Royal Mail has been privatised. They are two quite separate companies.

[Mr Binley]

I thank the Front Bench spokesman for that rather pernickety interjection. I will now continue. Of course it has not been privatised—only 70% of its shares have been sold off. We all recognise that point. We know where we are, so there are more serious questions that I would wish the Front Bench spokesman to address, quite frankly. Let us hope we can move on to them.

Fair competition has parameters that need to be well understood. Fair competition needs to take place with a focus on the public interest first of all. That is a consideration we need to hold very closely to our hearts. It is about making sure that the predatory exploitation of a dominant market position does not harm consumers or undermine others who seek to participate in a competitive environment. There are dangers that cherry-picking does, in truth, undermine that. The context of this debate is making sure that the end-to-end postal services in an urban and suburban setting do not undermine the financial sustainability of the universal service obligation, where in my view the overwhelming public interest can be found.

The truth of the matter, and this is a pretty heavy warning that I hope those on the Front Bench will take note of, is that if we are not careful and if action is not taken, we will be driven to the point where the universal service becomes a much more limited service, or is driven to the point where prices are so high it puts itself into a state of extinction. I believe there is enough evidence in the marketplace to suggest that those fears need to be taken seriously.

I believe in the decency of people and especially the decency of the great majority of Royal Mail workers who serve households in every part of the United Kingdom very well. I would like especially to pay tribute to those Royal Mail workers who work, live and provide service in my own constituency of Northampton South. I talk with them very often. I visited them during the passing of the Bill and had sizeable discussions with them—even with Mr Billy Hayes. I pay tribute to him for the way he undertook those discussions. I believe in the basic decency of Royal Mail workers. They are a much-valued part of our national infrastructure. We should give no thought to being anti-union in any way at all, bearing in mind that they have acted in a proper manner and have in many respects taken some pretty heavy knocks from their own specific political point of view. We should pay tribute to them and I am perfectly happy to do so. I repeat that they are a much-valued part of our national infrastructure, especially in the most remote areas.

It is not just in the rural and remote areas where we should be grateful for Royal Mail. There are many outlying areas in places other than the wilds of Dartmoor and the highlands of Scotland. In fact, near to my town of Northampton, many outlying and very small communities rely totally on the postal service. Very often, the postie fulfils a much more important role in terms of social connection than many of us really understand. I am not sure that the companies that are cherry-picking at the moment understand that point of view. Some of the reports we have had back show that the sorts of workers they are beginning to employ perhaps do not fulfil the criteria that most of us would want our postal service workers to fulfil.

I have a firm belief in the universal service obligation, underpinned as it is by statute in the Postal Services Act 2011. Indeed, I sponsored an amendment in the Committee stage to secure the obligation for 10 years, rather than the Government’s original proposal of 18 months. I am very proud of having helped to secure that amendment. However, it seems probable that other players in the postal market will, as they have so far, cherry-pick the operations that offer soft opportunities for profit, leaving the Royal Mail with the relatively less attractive deliveries. The question for the Government is the extent to which the goal of competition in the postal services market should be allowed to undermine the viability of the Royal Mail’s balance sheet. If that viability is allowed to be undermined, that would bring the whole question of the USO into serious danger.

We need to respect the spirit of what was enshrined in the Postal Services Act, as well as the letter of the law. Ofcom needs to ensure that competition in the postal services market does not in any way undermine the USO. That is its task—it is the regulator. I call on it to carry out its duty as we originally intended, both in law and in spirit. The two are not always coincidental. This House is clear that, where a conflict between competition and the USO arises, it is the obligation that should take priority. I hope we will impress that on Ofcom as a result of this debate and in other ways as time passes.

Royal Mail workers, like our constituents, were clear in what was given to them as a clear undertaking in the 2011 Act. An unequivocal restatement of that commitment from the Dispatch Box would be a very welcome response to this debate. I have a number of questions to put that I hope the Front Bench spokesman will answer in her summing up. First, will the Minister confirm that the USO is enshrined in statute in the 2011 Act? On that basis, would it not require a further Act of Parliament to repeal the obligation?

Secondly, the market in which Royal Mail operates is subject to cherry-picking from other operators not bound by the USO. The Government have stated that their policy is that competition should not undermine the USO. What discussions has the Minister had with Ofcom on that and on the precedence of the USO contained in the 2011 Act?

Thirdly, does the Minister accept that the USO rests on the principle of cross-subsidy from the cheaper urban areas towards the greater cost of delivery to rural areas? What change has taken place in the market in the last few years that could alter the balance of competition between Royal Mail and its competitors?

Fourthly, one factor affecting the distribution of power in the postal market is the price of stamps relative to the prices charged by other deliverers. What assurances can consumers expect in future years that Royal Mail’s pricing will reflect the response of postal service users, so as to protect the universal service obligation?

Fifthly, Ofcom has promised to produce a full assessment of the impact of the universal service obligation and competition in the market for the end of 2015. As it is now four years since the passing of the Act, what assessment has the Minister made of any changes that might compromise the universal service obligation, and what impact does she anticipate Scottish independence would have on the economics of the postal services market? Does the Minister recognise that we need a review sooner rather than later? The whole question of competition has moved on much more quickly than we might have thought when we passed the 2011 Act.

In conclusion, let me repeat that I supported the 2011 Act, and I still do. However, I also support the need of the regulator to do its job according to law and the spirit of what the Act was trying to do. I therefore call on the Government to ensure that a proper review takes place much sooner rather than later, and to give us an undertaking that the universal service obligation will remain at the forefront of postal services in this country, even though that might mean laying conditions on those who operate competitor services and even, to a certain extent, an understanding that those services need to provide a levy to subsidise the universal service, if that is necessary to retain it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Katy Clark]

The debate has been extremely useful. I hope that what the Minister says in private is slightly different from what she has said in public today, because she has shown a level of complacency that was not seen in the contributions of Back-Bench Members on both sides of the House. There is a huge amount of concern about the speed at which TNT is expanding its service in the UK and about the impact that that could have on the universal service. I am interested that the Minister is meeting Ofcom later today and welcome the suggestion that Ofcom meet hon. Members, which would be useful. It would also be helpful if Ministers attended the meeting, so I would be grateful if she undertook to do so.

The Minister says that only a small proportion of work is currently undertaken by operators other than Royal Mail, which I made clear in my opening contribution. However, the concern is that TNT’s proposals, which are publicly available and which most hon. Members here have already seen, make clear the speed at which it will expand in this country. As a result, it will be covering a huge number—over 40%—of households, which is different from anything that the House discussed in the various debates that took place—

[Mr Binley]

rose—

[Katy Clark]

I am not sure whether I am able to take interventions when making a closing speech, but if I could allow anybody, it would be the hon. Gentleman given his track record on this issue.

Yes, we have had 10 years of competition, but the lesson that we have learned is that the market does not respond well to competition. The current regime is not protecting the services that we receive. The reality is that we have fewer services now than we did when competition came in. We all remember Sunday collections and twice-a-day deliveries. The road that we are on is extremely dangerous and is a threat to postal services in all parts of the UK. I hope that the Government will take on board the emotion and passion of hon. Members’ contributions today and insist that Ofcom urgently carry out a speedy review.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House believes that the Universal Service Obligation as set out in the Postal Services Act 2011 is under threat from unfair competition from organisations which are rapidly expanding end-to-end delivery services in low-cost, high-density urban areas while leaving high-cost, low-density rural areas to be covered by Royal Mail, the universal service provider; and calls on the Government to instruct Ofcom to bring forward proposals to protect the Universal Service Obligation and the commercial viability of Royal Mail against this threat.

Oral Answers to Questions

Brian Binley Excerpts

Monday 10th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Charlie Elphicke]

I have great sympathy with my hon. Friend, who has been a staunch supporter of this principle in her time here. I thank her for her support in times past.

In closing, I want to note what Baroness Butler-Sloss said in another place:

“I had very useful discussions with an organisation, Families Need Fathers, and I ask the Minister to see that any information that is sent out to various organisations also goes to that one because it has an utterly sensible approach. It is very keen that the non-resident parent should have a proper connection with the child to further the child’s welfare, but recognises that it is not shared parenting. It is an extremely useful organisation and I commend it.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 5 February 2014; Vol. 752, c. 206.]

[Mr Brian Binley (Northampton South) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on his speech and on introducing his private Member’s Bill, which followed mine a couple of years ago. I am concerned that Butler-Sloss’s amendment will water down the rights that we want to create for parents of either sex who do not generally live with the family. I urge the Minister, through you, Madam Deputy Speaker, to be absolutely firm on this point—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. The hon. Gentleman’s intervention is so long he has lost sight of the fact that there has been a sex change in the Chair. I think he has completed his intervention, for which the House is inordinately grateful.

[Mr Binley]

You would not want me to respond, Mr Speaker.

[Mr Speaker]

Probably not.

Start-up Loans

Brian Binley Excerpts

Wednesday 20th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Hancock]

That is precisely why we need programmes such as this one, which I hope the hon. Gentleman supports. It is important for us all to realise just how difficult it is to recover from the scale of the banking crisis under the previous Government. Many measures are of course needed, and this very important one is helping thousands of people to start their own businesses and realise their dreams.

[Mr Brian Binley (Northampton South) (Con)]

I congratulate Mr Martin and wish him well. I started two small businesses that now employ almost 300 people, having gone into a sub-branch of Lloyds bank and come out with a facility of £60,000 in 1989. That would not happen now, so my concern is about whether information is getting through properly at the coal face. Will the Minister tell us whether that is happening, and will he continue to monitor that matter to ensure that the people he rightly says are in need of loans can receive them?

[Matthew Hancock]

Absolutely. The development and acceleration of the scheme includes an acceleration in people being able to get hard cash. In many cases, the turnaround time from application to delivery of the cash is about two weeks and, given that speed kills in relation to starting a new business, that is an important part of the process.

Adult Literacy and Numeracy

Brian Binley Excerpts

Thursday 10th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Gosport (Caroline Dinenage) on securing this important debate. She has worked tirelessly and done a huge amount on adult literacy. As colleagues have said, this is not a party political issue—it affects all our constituencies and all who live in our country. I have always passionately believed that education is a lifelong journey and not one that stops at A-level, university or apprenticeship level. Improving standards of adult literacy and numeracy is fundamental both to our economy and to the well-being of every man and woman who struggles with those crucial skills.

I should like to talk about an under-reported but hugely important project helping and training thousands of people at all levels to improve their skills through learning. Unionlearn, in collaboration with the TUC, trains thousands of union learning reps and has helped hundreds of thousands to train and learn through their union every year. Before entering the House, I had the opportunity to see first hand the difference the scheme makes to real people in the real workplace, and the brilliant results.

[Mr Brian Binley (Northampton South) (Con)]

I apologise for being late, Mr Speaker.

When I was a relatively young man, I took great advantage of, and was very well served by, the Workers Education Association. I was a secondary modern schoolboy who left at 15, and the WEA had the important effect of broadening my horizons. Will the hon. Lady help us by telling us whether that organisation is still doing that good work? If so, are we helping it as we should?

[Julie Elliott]

The WEA is very active, and certainly in my area. It often uses the skills of people who have retired from full-time careers in education—they do a little bit of work here and there to help to train people. It is an active but undervalued organisation.

Union learning dates back to the 19th century, with the establishment of colleges for working people. More recently, the union learning fund, set up in 1998, distributed £150 million towards training and education, which helped to recruit many union learning reps and expand the number of people in training and education. The fund, which has supported more than 50 unions in more than 700 workplaces, has several key goals: to embed learning and skills so that they become a core strategic objective of all unions; to help unions form active partnerships with employers, which I will mention later; and to raise demand for learning among the low skilled and other disadvantaged groups. Colleagues have mentioned people using their peers to access learning. When people are vulnerable and find themselves in adult life without the ability to read and write properly, peer groups are a crucial tool to making that first step into learning.

Unionlearn exists because of a fierce belief that access to learning is fundamental to every person’s life chances, and that such opportunities should be available to everyone—the entire work force—regardless of background. The access to opportunity, and the ability to reach people who may not have been reached by others, makes Unionlearn and union-led education so crucial to the well-being of hundreds of thousands of people.

Approximately 20% of the adult population cannot read to a level that allows them to do their job effectively or gain a promotion, and more than 5 million lack a good GCSE or equivalent in English. In my experience, I have seen examples of incredibly gifted people who cannot read and write much more than their own name, but who have tremendous other skills that have enabled them to get through a workplace and end up at a senior level. One of the most alarming and surprising things I learned when I was involved with Unionlearn was that some incredibly senior managers could do little more than write their own names. Obviously, they have huge skills to have the ability to work around that and get to that point.

Substandard reading skills are strongly linked to poor writing skills, so many adults are prevented from helping their children with homework, which exacerbates the problem, because it is extended to the next generation. As I have said, some people are barred from career advancement because they are unable to fill out job applications. The hon. Member for Ribble Valley (Mr Evans) mentioned online learning and the internet. People need a basic understanding of English and writing to access the help available.

A Government-backed study found that nearly 50% of working-age adults in England struggle with maths. Innumeracy does not just affect people’s ability in the workplace, but follows them everywhere, from looking at price comparison websites to reading bus timetables. Alex Smiles Ltd is a great example of union-led training in my constituency of Sunderland Central. The firm employs more than 100 people. Its core activity is the gathering, processing and recycling of waste materials produced by the construction and manufacturing industries. It is a non-unionised workplace, and represents an increasing number of employers that Unionlearn and the TUC regularly work with through partnership working initiatives.

More than 16% of the Alex Smiles Ltd workforce have completed a numeracy qualification and 15% completed a literacy qualification at either level 1 or 2. Becky Smiles, the training and development manager at Alex Smiles, has said of Unionlearn:

“Every interaction has been positive and business-led, driven by making us a better, higher-performing workplace in every respect. The learning activity is making inroads to upskilling our people and addressing front-line business goals that have bottom-line benefits, too.”

Adult literacy and numeracy skills are fundamental to our economy, and to the life chances and well-being of every individual in the country. Unionlearn and other union-led projects give all people the chance to improve their skills, and I am delighted to have had the opportunity to sing their praises and raise awareness of that excellent scheme.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I was teaching in Britain, where of course 1,000 million makes 1 billion—let us get that straight from the beginning.

I met Lord Moser recently at a reception in the House of Lords. He is an elderly man now, but he still despairs of the problem of adult innumeracy. Adults are bamboozled by politicians because we throw numbers about all the time—all parties do it. A Front Bench spokesperson can say, “We are going to spend £20 million extra on the national health service.” Twenty million pounds is absolutely nothing in the scheme of things in public expenditure, but £20 billion is a significant amount. Politicians constantly bamboozle the electorate, knowing that they can be not very sophisticated at handling such numbers.

I used to teach elementary statistics to A-level students studying sociology. I used to do simple sums with square numbers to find the square root. For example, the square root of 100 is 10—that is quite easy. When one of my students said that nine times nine was 89 and 10 times 10 was 110, I realised there was a problem. I have another anecdote. The daughter of a good friend of mine wanted to be a nurse. She had various O-levels, so I said, “Why can’t you be a nurse?” She said, “I can’t pass O-level maths.” I asked her why not. She said that she could not do multiplication because she had never been taught it—imagine that.

We have to go back to a philosophy of education and teaching that was utterly misguided. My wife and my brother are both primary school teachers. In the 1960s, 1970s and, to a certain extent, the 1980s, rote learning of tables was regarded as anathema—absolutely forbidden. Complete and total nonsense. Of course, I angered many of my good friends on the left who thought I was some sort of authoritarian, because I thought that learning tables was a good idea so that people knew that 12 times 12 was 144—elementary stuff.

When I first entered the House in 1997, I raised this issue with the then Schools Minister, Stephen Byers. I said that we had to look at teaching methods and the interface between teachers and pupils, particularly in primary schools so that pupils learn numeracy properly at the beginning. He said, “Oh no, that would be too prescriptive.” Sometimes we have to be prescriptive. We have to say that some things work and some things do not work. Let us look at other countries where numeracy is better.

The international comparison table published in The Independent yesterday showed that we are slipping down the table, and that 16 to 24-year-olds are actually worse than the previous generation. We are now quite low down the table, which is very worrying. If we are to produce the engineers and the skills we need for the future, we have to address numeracy problems. Governments have to look at what works and try to ensure that that is what is applied in schools. It is not enough to reorganise institutions—creating academies and free schools and so on. We have to look at what is happening in the classroom at every state school, because we have a problem.

[Mr Binley]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who I will refer to as my hon. Friend, because he is a friend. I am delighted that he is speaking so passionately from such an informed background—it is very helpful. I wonder whether we have enough of a joined-up approach to adult illiteracy and innumeracy. I also wonder whether we use our libraries enough, and whether the Minister ought to be thinking about using such facilities and giving them a new lease of life.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his helpful intervention.

We should try to have one-to-one teaching for adults with numeracy problems. I have done some coaching and have found that it is often the simple things that fox people. Not everybody is gifted at mathematics, but sometimes people are puzzled because they do not realise that a division sum can be expressed in different ways: by having one number over another, or by having two dots on either side of a line. People get confused, but it all means the same thing. How many times does 10 go into 100? Whichever way we write it down, it will always be 10. We have to have one-to-one tuition. During my coaching and teaching I have seen the light that appears in people’s eyes when they understand something that has mystified them all their lives.

We have to look at what happens in the classroom between the teacher and the pupil. We have to ensure that teachers in primary schools are comfortable with mathematics, can handle numbers and feel at ease with them. A deeply worrying statistic from 40 or 50 years ago was that 60% of primary school teachers had failed O-level maths. I am not saying that O-level maths is the acme of success, but it showed that they were uncomfortable with the subject. If teachers are uncomfortable with the subject, having them introduce children to mathematics is not a sensible way to proceed.

It is clear from the statistics published yesterday, and from the Moser report some time ago, that we still have a problem. We are slipping down the league table and Lord Moser still has concerns. I hope that the Government, whoever is in office, address this problem by looking at teaching methods and finding out what works. We need to ensure that the next generation of children do not become innumerate like so many adults today.

--- Later in debate ---

[Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)]

I will obey Mr Speaker’s admonition to be brief, not least because I do not think I could hope to match the expertise already shown by other hon. Members.

I should like to say a few words about my own constituency experience, but let me first congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Caroline Dinenage) on securing this debate and pay tribute to the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman), who made a very thoughtful speech. I agree with him that this issue should not be party political. I agree with him that Governments of every shade have failed to get to grips with dealing with adult education, illiteracy and innumeracy. I hope he will agree with me that the failures of the past must not be the yardstick for the future. When my hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley (Mr Evans) asks, “When do we deal with this issue?”, I hope we will all say “Now” and I hope the Minister will say “Now”, too, when he replies shortly to the debate.

I am pleased to say that unemployment is falling in my constituency and is now lower than at any time since before the recession. The biggest barrier to entry to employment for young people in my constituency, however, is illiteracy and innumeracy. When I talk to local employers—small and medium-sized enterprises such as light engineering firms and chemicals or plastics firms—they tell me “Yes, we can find new 40 and 50-year-olds to replace the people who retire, but we do not have younger people with the right level of numeracy or literacy to replace our employees.” That presents SMEs in my constituency, and in the country, with a ticking time-bomb, as they will struggle to find the right people with the right skills to replace their employees. Unless we are able to educate young adults and the kids at school now, we will not succeed in the global race about which the Prime Minister and the Chancellor rightly talk.

We also face a challenge with communication. We all deal every day with constituents who raise problems with us via e-mail or letter. All too many of my constituents who write or e-mail me are older people. My office gets lots of phone calls from younger people with housing, immigration or tax issues, but when my office says, “Can you send us an e-mail or write to us to provide more detail so that we can fully understand your problem”, all too many respond by saying, “Actually, we would rather not e-mail and rather not write because we are not comfortable about doing that.” How can we hope to help our constituents when they cannot communicate effectively with us about their problems and concerns?

[Mr Binley]

I believe that our libraries can offer much more training than they are at present. I urge the Minister to look at the connection between education and libraries, particularly with regard to technology. I am one of the people who are bemused by it. It is right to point out that this is a generational issue, but I think we could do much more in our localities through our libraries if only there were more of a joined-up approach to the problem.

[Christopher Pincher]

Mystic Binley demonstrates once again his crystal-ball-gazing skills, as I was just about to come on to the issue of libraries. The local library in my constituency, provided by Staffordshire county council, offers free books to help adult readers. A local volunteer organisation, DIGIT—the dyslexia information group in Tamworth—provides support to those adult learners by providing them with reading buddies. DIGIT does even more by providing help for Tamworth’s young children falling within the scope of the dyslexia spectrum to improve their reading, writing and arithmetic skills. Academisation has also helped. My local head teachers now have more scope to decide what to teach, how to teach it and whom to employ. GCSE results at the Rawlett School, for instance, have improved significantly this year. However, more still desperately needs to be done.

We have the adult and community learning fund—to which I am sure the Minister will refer—the skills for life fund and the traineeship programme, all of them underpinned by Government and supported by money so that young adults can be helped to learn, but I must ask the Minister to consider two other issues. The first is the teaching and knowledge of dyslexia in our schools, which is at best uneven. Tamworth has some good dyslexia teaching schools, such as Wilnecote high school, but others are less good. That is because there are not enough teachers with the right skills, and not enough head teachers who know enough about the scope of the dyslexia spectrum to deal with young people who suffer from the condition. We also need to ensure that there is as much dyslexia teaching in primary schools as in secondary schools, so that dyslexia can be recognised and dealt with as early as possible.

The second issue, which I hope the Minister will consider during his discussions with his colleagues in the Department for Education, is the need for more vertical integration between primary and secondary schools. All too many students in my constituency go to secondary school at the age of 11 with a reading age of seven. They are doomed to failure at GCSE the moment they walk through the door of their secondary school. We need secondary schools to know as early as possible which kids face challenges so that they can help the primary schools to help those children, and the children can go to secondary school with a higher reading age and improve their chances of obtaining better GCSEs. We must ensure that children do not walk into a cliff face at the age of 11 because their secondary schools did not know who they were.

I think that if we do what so many Members today have suggested we do—and if the Minister at least takes on board the two points that I have raised—we shall be able to improve literacy and numeracy, and improve the life chances of so many of our constituents who, for so long, have been disregarded and have not been helped.

--- Later in debate ---

[Matthew Hancock]

I could not agree more with almost everything the hon. Gentleman has said in this debate. He made a remarkable contribution and I was coming on to respond in more detail to it. I entirely agree that getting teaching methods that work matters, but what also matters is that the teachers believe in the methods they are using—that is what the evidence shows—and move away from what he called an “utterly misguided” philosophy of learning. I like him more the more I listen; thank goodness there are people on both sides of this House who think that it is utterly misguided not to stretch pupils and not to have rigorous and evidence-based methods of teaching.

We are also tackling levels of illiteracy among benefit claimants, introducing new conditionality to require the learning of English and looking towards introducing a concept for younger benefit claimants of “earn or learn”, so that we incentivise people into training rather than pay them so long as they do not train for more than 16 hours a week.

Apprenticeships and traineeships are, of course, close to my heart, and they increasingly require English and maths. Some people say, “If you go into an apprenticeship, you should not have to do English and maths because apprenticeships are for people who are going into jobs that do not require those things.” But there is almost no job that does not require a basic standard of English and maths. In this modern workplace—by that I mean around the country, not necessarily in this building, as it is not the most modern of workplaces—the level of English and maths required is vital.

[Mr Binley]

The Minister knows I am keen on using community assets in a much more imaginative way. How might we do that in this context, particularly with libraries, which are very underfunded, as the shadow Minister stated? How might we improve that situation and have a more involved local community push in this respect?

[Matthew Hancock]

I was coming on to deal with the role of community facilities, where I understand my hon. Friend is driving forward the argument. Academies and free schools are one way to help, because giving more autonomy to head teachers allows them to use their buildings as they wish. On libraries, managing community facilities more imaginatively is important, and a lot of that is down to the individual managers of individual institutions. I strongly support what he said about that.

Of course, good teaching of English and maths requires good English and maths teachers, so we are today announcing new Department for Education support for the national centre for excellence in the teaching of maths to develop a maths enhancement programme to upskill existing teachers of maths in further education. The programme will be delivered by professional development leads associated with the centres for excellence in teaching and training. We need more maths teachers, and we are on track this year to have trained more than 600 FE teachers. So we are constantly working to drive up the number of English and maths teachers, as well as the English and maths taught.

Above all, this comes down to school reform, because without excellent schools we will not solve this generational problem. I hope that the OECD report will have helped to build a stronger consensus behind our school reforms, which remain opposed—inexplicably—by some people who otherwise describe themselves as “progressive”. As the shadow Minister said, the OECD showed the problem of the link between deprivation and education being greater in England and Northern Ireland than elsewhere, but the problem is that poor education entrenches deprivation. Education needs to be the foundation of social mobility, and in the UK that is not happening nearly enough now. The hon. Gentleman did not mention the collapse that the OECD study showed in the results among 16 to 24-year-olds, where this country has gone from the top to very near the bottom. We are driving forward on making sure that we reform our schools system, bring in free schools, give head teachers powers under academisation and improve the standards of teachers. However, we have opposition, and I do not understand why people who otherwise call themselves “progressive” say that they are opposed to these things. I wonder whether we are going to get a change of heart from the Opposition Front-Bench team on so-called “unqualified teachers”, not least because the new shadow Education Secretary once was an unqualified teacher.

Higher and Further Education

Brian Binley Excerpts

Tuesday 11th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr James Clappison (Hertsmere) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker—I hope I will not take that long.

It is always a great pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East (Mr Brown), who is a great champion of the north-east. Both he and the hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood), who spoke for the Opposition, made some perfectly proper points about tuition fees in principle. Her points were answered comprehensively from the Government Front Bench by the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson) when he took the Labour Government’s tuition fees Bill through the House in 2003. I had the pleasure of serving on that Bill Committee. The same points arose then, but with one significant distinction: the Labour Government’s increase in tuition fees was introduced at a time when the public finances were in a completely different position to the one they are in today.

Then as now, however, the issue of tuition fees was politically linked to what Ministers then and now have chosen to call “access to universities”. Then and now, my question, which arises naturally from the question of access, is about maintaining the highest possible academic standards in universities.

Like many others, I believe that the achievement of those high standards, which is in our national interest, depends on admissions to university being strictly on merit and admitting those whom the universities judge to be of the highest merit. The universities themselves are best placed to make that judgment. That the principle of university autonomy over admissions ought to be cherished is a clear conclusion to be drawn from a conservative view of the world. It would be anathema to somebody who really believed in a free society to contemplate with equanimity the prospect of state interference, whether directly or indirectly through a quango, in university admissions.

[Mr Brian Binley (Northampton South) (Con)]

rose—

[Mr Clappison]

I will give way to my hon. Friend, because I get an extra minute if I do so.

[Mr Binley]

Does my hon. Friend realise that the new director of OFFA reportedly said that he wants the Russell group universities to admit one student from a poor background for every student accepted from a wealthy background? Is means-testing becoming part of the admissions process, thus excluding some students for reasons other than academic ones, and does it suggest that our worst fears about this new appointment are coming to fruition?

[Mr Clappison]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention. I have written to the Minister about this, and I look forward to hearing his interpretation of the remarks of the distinguished gentlemen placed in charge of OFFA. I hope that the Minister will answer that in his winding-up speech.

Ministers claim to be interested in encouraging applications but not in interfering with or influencing admissions, yet Governments send out directives to OFFA telling them how to set access agreements and giving them clear political steers. How can we see it as anything other than political interference when Ministers send guidance to OFFA enjoining it to implement Ministers’ wishes, as happened under the previous Government and is happening under this one? In a directive last year, the Government told OFFA to send the following message to universities:

“Through this letter we want to encourage you and the higher education sector to focus more sharply on the outcomes of outreach and other access activities rather than the inputs and processes”.

To what, other than admissions, could “outcomes” possibly refer? They are the only way that outcomes can be defined and measured. How can that not affect universities, given that OFFA has swingeing powers to take away their income if they do not comply with its injunctions?

How can we say that universities have complete freedom over admissions when they have this apparatus hanging over them? How can they not be influenced, given that they face swingeing fines and their fee income being withheld if they do not comply with OFFA’s targets?

Oral Answers to Questions

Brian Binley Excerpts

Thursday 2nd February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Vince Cable]

If the hon. Gentleman actually read the analysis produced by the Bank of England and, more recently, the Institute for Fiscal Studies, he would understand why the economy is growing slowly. The combination of higher commodity and oil prices last year and, more recently, the crisis in the eurozone is affecting all developed countries, many of them much more than the UK.

[Mr Brian Binley (Northampton South) (Con)]

As confidence in growth continues to diminish among members of the small business community, does the Secretary of State share my view that the Chancellor should use more than one tool to get the economy moving? Many people think that he has lost the tool box. What influence is the Secretary of State bringing to bear on behalf of small businesses to nudge the Chancellor into creating greater private sector demand?

[Vince Cable]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to stress the crucial importance of small business. As he well knows from the autumn statement, the Chancellor has come forward with ideas about credit easing to make credit more easily available at lower rates to small companies, and we will wait for the Budget to see how that will be elaborated.

Public Disorder

Brian Binley Excerpts

Thursday 11th August 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Brian Binley (Northampton South) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee. I wish him well in his important work and look forward to the Committee's report.

My constituency is a microcosm of Britain in its ethnic make-up. The similarity between Northampton South and the national make-up is startling. I have sought the views of my constituents across that ethnic spectrum in the past three days and I said that I would report their words to the House, because they are important and we need to listen to them.

My constituents said that we should not seek to provide excuses or justification for violent disorder; and that we witnessed blatant criminality and thuggishness in the riots and we should recognise that. They told me that we need to stand up to those who are driven by a total disregard for others and should make no apology for them. They said that we need to protect individuals in our communities, their livelihoods and the businesses where they work. They were the victims in the past four days, not the people who chose to disregard and abuse them. My constituents say that, consequently, our first priority is to maintain order on our streets, and I bring that message to the House.

My constituents also say that we need to change the culture of our policing; that law enforcement, like justice, needs to be done and seen to be done; and that when punches are thrown at a police officer, the person should be arrested there and then so that the pictures go out across the nation, showing that the police are taking law enforcement seriously. Saying that they will get people later through CCTV has less of an impact. Immediate action is a vital part of stopping copycat criminals, and we need to take that on board.

I am sad to say this to my Front Benchers, but we need to review police numbers. We need to look at what is happening this year and take the riots into account. The review should be not only about numbers, but about deployment, and we should conduct it before we make our decisions about the funding formula grants next year.

My constituents told me that the riots were not a matter of poverty, ethnicity, multiculturalism, unemployment or cuts. They say that claiming that is an insult to the many hundreds of thousands of people who come from underprivileged backgrounds and who have fought their way out and created successful lives, making a success of business and careers. They are sick to death of being tarred with the same brush. It does not help our society to do that. We need to take on that message, too.

My constituents are not very happy with the politicians. We need to take responsibility in the House for what we do. They deplore the fact that we do not seem to listen to them. They tell us that we are failing in that respect. They deplore our misrepresenting of important issues and putting political slant first. They deplore the fact that we make promises that we cannot or do not keep, and that we spin and show them disrespect. That goes for all of us. It is no good saying that it applies only to Government Members—it is all of us, and we need to take that on board. That is the message that I promised to bring to this place. My constituents want us, too, to change our act. We are part of the problem; we need to be part of the answer.

Intellectual Property (Hargreaves Report)

Brian Binley Excerpts

Thursday 7th July 2011 Westminster Hall

[Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Chope, and to have heard the contributions of the previous speakers, who have a great deal of knowledge and expertise in this subject, particularly as a result of the work done in previous Parliaments and in passing the Digital Economy Act 2010.

I come to the debate not only as a member of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, but as someone whose work and business background was largely in the creative economy, given that I worked in the advertising industry. As I can see from my constituency, the creative economy plays an important role in the regeneration of our economy. I entirely agree with the right hon. Member for Bath (Mr Foster) that it has fantastic scope and potential as one of this country’s great industries. In many sectors, we truly lead the world, and they can be part of the growth of our economy as it recovers.

However, we are talking not just about an economy of large businesses or about multinational companies seeking to purchase, use and benefit from the rights to creative content, but about a complex web of different businesses, large and small, which are interdependent and which rely on one another. In the creative quarter in the old part of Folkestone, which is very much part of the town’s regeneration, 200 to 300 people are employed in the creative economy as artists, web designers, website creators and games makers. Many of their businesses are simple partnerships of two or three people or small stand-alone businesses. Their ability to make things, sell them in a fair and open financial market place and benefit from them is incredibly important to their survival.

It is a particular pleasure that the debate is taking place in the Grand Committee Room. About six months ago, I organised an event for about 70 art students from colleges right across the country, from the south-west to London, Lincolnshire and Leeds. The group was organised by Graham Fink, the creative director of M&C Saatchi, who runs a free service for art students. He brought them into this room to run a creative workshop, hoping that they would be inspired by being in the Palace of Westminster and in this great forum for debate and ideas. It was fantastic to see the work and enthusiasm of those young people seeking to break into the industry, although it would be remiss of me to say whether they generated more original thinking and ideas in an hour than we will manage in the next hour. It was certainly a great pleasure to see their work and their enormous enthusiasm. Everyone with a knowledge of and passion for the creative industries understands its scope as a business and knows that young people want to work in it; they want to bring their ideas and be part of it. They have a right to expect a fair recompense for their ideas and work, and for the effort they put in.

Technology has changed the marketplace dramatically, but it can also be the great hope of the creative industries. I am thinking of the internet’s ability to supply what is referred to as the long-tail supply chain, in which the owners of niche works that would otherwise struggle to get listed can sell them in an open marketplace. The ability to search for and find work through search engines and the internet is a great advantage, but there must be rules of engagement. The direction in the finding of materials should be fair. Websites and search engines should direct people to places where works can be legitimately purchased. Many people have concerns that instead of directing people to legitimate places where they can buy works, predictive search, in particular, directs them to places where they can be obtained by piracy.

[Mr Brian Binley (Northampton South) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making an interesting and important speech, but I am concerned about the direction by search engines to sites where the creators of material can be recompensed. Does he agree that search engines should be more able to act in that way? Should the Government think more about a little nudging and forcing in that direction?

[Damian Collins]

My hon. Friend makes a compelling point, which will have been heard by Ministers and search engine owners. I attended a briefing with the BPI, which represents the music industry, to talk about that very issue and was given a live demonstration, in which typing “download music” into Google meant that the predictive search came up with “download music for free”.

If we believe that technical measures should be used to restrict people from downloading content illegally, we should consult those who run search engines about the priority and ranking that they give to sites that direct people to sources where they can do that. That is a legitimate part of the debate, and search engine representatives should welcome it and be open to consultation with Government about it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Binley]

I have listened to my hon. Friend’s comments, which are always immensely constructive and helpful, but I was concerned when I heard mention of the £10,000 fee for a small company. Many of the small companies operating in software creation are one-man bands, for whom that would be a large amount, even if that one-man band was immensely successful. Would she temper that cost a little?

[Lorely Burt]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. I merely used the figure as one that would allow a patent to be properly researched before it was granted. A two-tier system, with a larger fee for larger companies, would stop some abuses. For example, IBM—I am sorry to use it as an example again; I promise I do not have anything against it—took out a patent for the optimal way to queue for the toilets on an aircraft, which is hardly earth-shattering.

On patent submissions, the review failed to deal head-on with poor patent quality and patent backlogs. As I said earlier, patents can be challenged as soon as they are issued, but once they have been issued, there is no mechanism for enforcement except through recourse to the courts. By taking out a patent, a company could be doing itself a disservice by drawing attention to its innovation and attracting the predatory attention of large companies with big lawyers, which can steal the idea and line up the fancy lawyers and see what the small company is prepared to do about it.

That brings me to costs and damages. Let us look at what happens when a patent holder finally takes an alleged infringer to court. Costs awarded to the loser used to be open-ended but, since 14 June, they have been limited to £50,000, which is a step in the right direction. That was not the result of Hargreaves, and he did not mention it in his report. However, that £50,000 is £50,000 more than in America, and the limit forms a substantial deterrent to a small company taking on a large corporate with resources and lawyers. Also, the award for damages is limited to £500,000, so if someone has a multi-million-pound idea and a big company comes in and steals it, the big company can infringe the patent, knowing that the maximum it will have to shell out is £500,000—a bargain. Compare that with America, where Dyson won damages of £6 million after the expiry of its patent because other companies were too quick off the mark in marketing bagless vacuum cleaners. Hargreaves seems to think that the UK garden is rosy, because fewer UK companies went to court than EU companies, but the reason is not because they are happier, but because too many barriers are in the way.

Hargreaves also ignored the SME Innovation Alliance’s request for a UK penalty for infringing a patent. Is that believable? We are the only country in the G8 that has no penalty. The worst that can happen to infringers is that they might end up paying a hypothetical royalty, as if nothing untoward had happened. By the time an SME has spent years, and money, pursuing infringement, it ends up losing substantial resources—and that is if it wins. As Sir James Dyson put it, it is a bit like having the family silver stolen, with the best result being getting some of it back. Why was the fundamental need for the introduction of a penalty for infringing a patent totally ignored?

The SME Innovation Alliance also complained about difficulties enforcing patent rights abroad, an area on which most SME growth and job creation is dependent. Hargreaves and the IPO have been made fully aware of that, and the IPO acknowledged the difficulties, but Hargreaves did not tackle the subject. All in all, I am sorry to say that SMEs—the main source of UK innovation—believe that Hargreaves has failed them. The Government have to take note of the real needs of UK SMEs, instead of setting up a review that has had the perhaps unintended consequence of pandering to the needs of foreign corporates. In Hargreaves’s favour, he recommends adopting the European patent system, but the total maximum damages of £500,000, covering the whole of Europe, hardly make the game worth the candle for many companies.

I welcome the patent box, an idea that SME Innovation Alliance officers are discussing with the Treasury at the moment. The patent box provides a £1.1 billion tax break for innovative industries. That has been extended to existing industries, and there are proposals to simplify research and development tax credits, but we need that now, not in 2013, if we are serious about job creation.

[Philip Davies in the Chair]

If the patent system does not protect British companies, we are making it harder to innovate in the UK than perhaps anywhere else in the G20, and far easier for others to steal our UK innovations. The SME Innovation Alliance has a number of ideas to improve the system greatly, and I would very much like our Government to take them seriously. Otherwise, all they can do is criticise Ministers for not providing a workable patent system for SMEs, the main source of UK innovation. I therefore conclude by asking the Minister to meet me and the SME Innovation Alliance to sort out the current mess in the patents system.

[Mr Brian Binley (Northampton South) (Con)]

I welcome you to the Chair, Mr Davies. It is a pleasure to serve under your direction. This is the first time that I have had that pleasure, and I promise that I will do my best not to cause you difficulties.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) on instigating this debate, which is opportune and important. His knowledge of the creative industries is second to none in the House, and his work on that does him and those industries great credit. We are all happy to support him.

I welcome the Hargreaves review as a start, but like the hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge (Jim Dowd), I have some reservations. However, it is an opportunity to support intellectual property in the business sector, which is especially important for the creative industries. The case for those industries has been made very well in other contributions to the debate, and they might be starved of the oxygen of finance if we do not do something quickly. That is why I urge the Government to get on with the job of putting the report into effect. It is good that they have agreed to consult, but most of us want early notice of a Bill to support both business and the creative industries.

In a developed economy, intellectual property rights are fundamental to economic growth. If we lose sight of that fact, we do considerable harm to business and commerce in this country. I urge the Minister to recognise the needs of industry in that respect. It is vital that intellectual property rights are enhanced, protected and supported, and that the creators of those rights get their fair and just return. That cannot be said with confidence to apply at the moment, and therein lies the problem, as some contributors have said, which is why I urge the Government to act quickly.

We must get the matter right. If we fail to recognise and reward the value of creativity and innovation, we risk a reduction in the quantity and quality of new output, which is vital to the well-being of this nation. We have lost many of our rust-bucket industries and our young people are finding it difficult to get jobs, but creativity and innovation can be a vital spark to inspire many of those young people to become aspirational. I need only mention the games industry to show how inspirational creativity and innovation can be. Many young people have played a leading role in that and created a sizeable export industry for this country. We must take that into account.

The concern is felt particularly by the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Association, which has 80,000 members who make a considerable contribution to the well-being of this nation culturally, educationally and technically, to say little of their contribution to GDP. We must recognise those creative people as small businesses, because every one of them makes a contribution in the way I have described.

The current copyright system has failed to remove barriers to innovation. There is a gap between the law and reasonable expectation, and the behaviour of many people today regarding digital access. There is a lack of understanding that creativity must be paid for. As the hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge has said, to steal creative material is exactly that—it is stealing. If I produce something, I expect to be paid for it. That lies at the basis of a society that believes that hard work should have its reward. There is more to that in the spirit of our nation than often meets the eye. I have met young people who think it is their right to steal other people’s intellectual property, and that is the sort of culture that we have created. We must put an end to it, if we are to deal with the issue properly.

I welcome the single multinational regime, which offers the prospect of eliminating wasteful duplication and increasing the potential for cross-border commerce. That is a welcome innovation that the Government should think seriously about and get right when they draft a Bill. The Minister’s Department has estimated that that could increase income to the nation by at least £2 billion a year by 2020, and it could be considerably more than that if we released the potential that I believe exists.

The concept of IP attachés for emerging economies, such as China and India, is interesting, and I would be grateful if the Minister will give further information on that intriguing proposal. I want to know how he feels about the idea, which I believe is a good one. I recently led a delegation to China on behalf of the Select Committee on Business, Innovation and Skills. There is a view, rightly held in many areas, that China culturally sees knowledge as the birthright of all the peoples of the globe. It is a cultural concept that many of us admire, except that it means that they believe that they can have other people’s intellectual property.

To be fair, on that visit we found that the Chinese were genuinely getting down to the business of dealing with the issue, and they told that they have 60,000 inspectors on the ground. But I also saw a shop in Peking—sorry, Beijing, I am an old chap, as the Minister knows—selling CDs for £1 in our terms, which were clearly pirated and on open display. I am sure the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire who secured this debate will be horrified by that. He had worked on one of the CDs that I found, and he would probably like slightly more of a return from that particular enterprise.

I also want to talk about the impact of intellectual property on small businesses. I come from a county in which 94% of private sector work is in SMEs. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull (Lorely Burt) who has battled hard for the SME sector and suggested a meeting with the Minister. I know that he will want such a meeting to take place, and I am sure that a lot can come from it. Small and medium-sized enterprises are, without doubt, the main engine behind the Government’s growth agenda and behind wealth creation and the creation of more jobs in this country. Talking to those businesses about a matter that impacts so considerably on our young people has real import, and I look forward to hearing from my hon. Friend about the outcome of her meeting with the Minister.

The Hargreaves report deals with small and medium-sized businesses and recognises the importance of that sector, which I welcome. There is a symbiotic relationship between large and small firms on innovation and research and development, and supply chains are a large part of that. There are, however, complexities in the regime that are more challenging for small firms to navigate, and they need special understanding and help. I hope that the Government will recognise that when they introduce the legislation.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull and others have said, small firms need help with costs and with the law. A large company has the resources to promote understanding within the organisation about the impact of the law on a certain area of activity. Small businesses, however, do not have such resources. I have appealed again and again for the Government to recognise that the impact of a demanding regulation on large companies is multiplied 30 times in the SME sector in terms of cost and effort. The Government need to recognise that when they frame the legislation.

Small businesses want an integrated source of advice that combines commercial and technical insight with legal expertise. We need to understand how we can provide such a resource for the many small businesses that work in IP development, and we must enable them to commercialise as well as protect their intellectual property. I would, therefore, be grateful if the Minister were to expand on what action the Government propose to ensure that the regime is friendlier and more accessible to small and medium-sized businesses.

The Minister will not need telling that digitisation offers the prospect of democratising many of the written works in our language, which will spread economic, cultural, and educational benefits more widely. It is bizarre that researchers from Europe who seek to access material from before 1923 have to travel to the United States to view it. Although that material is readily available on the internet in the United States, it is not available in the United Kingdom. Ironically, much of it was produced and written in this country or in Europe, and it should be made available. It is a matter for the Minister to look into—I am talking specifically about material created up to 1923; I do not want the Minister to think that I seek to create a loophole to enable people not to pay their dues under copyright.

Digital material should be treated in the same way as other formats, offering the prospect of a simpler regime and architecture that commands greater compliance, respect and understanding. Copyright law should be technology-neutral, and contract law should no longer obstruct acts permitted by statute. Sadly, such acts are currently obstructed, and I want to draw that issue to the Minister’s attention.

In conclusion, I welcome the Government’s proposals on the patent box and on research and development credits. Applying a 10% corporation tax to profits attributed to patents would create a far more conducive environment in which innovators could operate. We need to retain our position as a world leader in patented technologies, and using the tax system to encourage that would be a positive measure for the Government to consider.

The Hargreaves report makes a vital and interesting contribution to the debate on intellectual property. We must, however, recognise that it is only a platform for debate,. The report needs genuine Government drive to translate into a Bill that will benefit the whole of our nation and, more specifically, be of import to small and medium-sized businesses. We need to be positive about encouraging innovation and growth, and we need to configure our policy and tax frameworks accordingly. As we gradually shift away from the economic woes of the past few years, above all else such innovation offers the prospect of sustained prosperity and success. My advice to the Minister, which I am sure that he will heed, is to get on with it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hayes]

I think that the right hon. Gentleman is underselling himself. He wants a much more sophisticated response than that. I think that there is an absolutely reasonable case to say that, if the person who authored a work is found in the way that he describes, they should receive some recompense or reward. We will need to look at that in our response to the review. The right hon. Gentleman makes a powerful argument, and it seems to me to be not without merit. That is not bad for someone who was not going to give him a direct answer, as I am sure he will be happy to acknowledge with his typical—characteristic, one might say—generosity.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton South has argued, we also need to ensure that we are influencing effectively what is happening overseas and supporting, again, positions based on evidence. We need not only to look at relationships with key partners, but to encourage other states to develop IP frameworks and enforce them appropriately, which is the point that my hon. Friend made. He will be pleased to know that we recently announced, jointly with the Chinese Government, that we will host an IP symposium. It will take place later this year with the appropriate Chinese authorities. It will seek to find a better mechanism for British businesses to raise and have addressed IP-related issues.

I will visit China next week and have no doubt that, among the many issues that I will discuss with the Chinese authorities, this may come up. I will certainly be able to refer to this debate. I give my hon. Friend my pledge that I will reflect on what he has said and, where appropriate and with all the due diligence and courtesy that is fitting to a Minister of the Crown, raise these issues with my Chinese counterparts. Ministers and officials regularly raise IP issues in that way with their counterparts in other countries. It is important that we build on the good relations that we have established to deal with these issues straightforwardly.

[Mr Binley]

Will my hon. Friend the Minister give way?

[Mr Hayes]

I will give way to my hon. Friend in a moment, but I want to give him one other piece of good news first. The UK recently announced that it will appoint IP attachés in countries including India and—my hon. Friend will be delighted to know—China. We expect them to be in place by the end of this financial year. They will work with host Governments on IP policies and with UK businesses to help to ensure that they can exploit and protect their IP effectively overseas.

[Mr Binley]

That is the quickest response for action I have every had from any Minister. I am most appreciative. I congratulate the Minister on taking on a very difficult brief that is not primarily his own. I understand that he does not want to say too much before the Government consultation has finished but, on the basis of our long friendship, will he talk to the Minister concerned about the use of search engines? The need to ensure that the creative arts get well recompensed for their product is vital and increasingly urgent.

[Mr Christopher Chope (in the Chair)]

Order. That is a long intervention.

[Mr Binley]

I shall sit down, Mr Chope. Your guidance is welcome, as it is based on experience.

[Mr Hayes]

My hon. Friend is right about the matter that he raises, and I will certainly do as he asks. He has some professional expertise in this field. Other hon. Members may not know that, but I have been pleased to visit Northampton with him many times, including this week. He brings some expert understanding to the subject. As I said, I share his background in the information systems world. He is right about search engines. I will draw his comments to the attention of both my noble Friend Baroness Wilcox who has responsibility in this area and, indeed, the Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport, my hon. Friend the Member for Wantage. If he had been asked to respond to the debate, contrary to what the hon. Member for Wrexham said, he would have been a peg below me; hon. Members are getting a Minister of State dealing with the matter, rather than an Under-Secretary. I think that that is a bonus. My hon. Friend the Member for Northampton South makes a fair point and, as I say, I will pass on his comments.

Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Performance)

Brian Binley Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Pat McFadden (Wolverhampton South East) (Lab)]

We should begin the debate by considering, as the motion asks us to do, the role of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. It has in recent years become a major spending Department, with the stewardship of universities and further education colleges. It is different from other Departments in that, uniquely, it stands on the boundary of the public and private sectors. Its job is to sell Britain abroad as a great location for doing business, and to help UK businesses to penetrate foreign markets. It is also, of course, the key location for business and employees to come to Government with business-related issues. It is, as the Secretary of State has described, the Department for growth—or it should be.

How Government achieve that growth—the role of Government in helping to foster growth—is what divides the House. There are those on the Government Benches, including the Secretary of State, who is no longer in his place, who previously called for the Department to be abolished, and who thought that there was no role for Government to play in fostering growth, apart from getting out of the way. That is not our view; we believe that there is an important and active role in fostering growth.

I take issue with one of the arguments that the Secretary of State has deployed time after time since the election—that the actions taken by the present Government would have been taken by Labour because we were committed to the same level of cuts. It is not true. The Government have launched a programme of cuts which is tens of billions of pounds more than anything that was being planned by the Labour Government, and he cannot continue to rest on that argument.

[Mr Brian Binley (Northampton South) (Con)]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. He is always very kind in these matters. If he knew the plans of the previous Government, having been a member of the previous Government, will he explain them to us in order that we can understand how the deficit would have been met?

[Mr McFadden]

If the hon. Gentleman casts his mind back a little more than a year to the pre-Budget report, he will find that cuts in spending were set out by the Department while I was a Minister there. He simply needs to read the pre-Budget report.

I admit that over time during the Labour Government our view on the Department’s role shifted. In the early days we were, perhaps, too reluctant to intervene in markets, but we got to the point where we were playing a much more active role and co-ordinating activity across Whitehall on key industrial and employment opportunities.

For example, with the Department of Energy and Climate Change, we produced the low carbon industrial strategy to achieve the most for UK industry out of the shift to low carbon power generation. On transport, we worked with the Department for Transport on an ultra-low-carbon vehicle strategy. In other words, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills played a leading and co-ordinating role to take advantage of the industrial and employment opportunities of the future. That is what we were doing to try to foster growth and employment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Angela Smith]

I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman. The Government’s current, very rushed, consultation on energy market reform could add significant extra burdens to the intensive energy-use industries that predominate in my constituency and could make them incredibly uncompetitive internationally.

Given the latest growth figures—or should I say shrinkage figures?—we need more than ever a plan for growth that invests in industry and helps to rebalance the economy away from the financial services and property speculation model that was built not by the previous Labour Government but by the Thatcher Government of the 1980s, with big bang and all the rest of it. I hear nothing about that planning from those on the Government Benches. All I hear is mixed messages and talk that is all about pleasing elements within the coalition rather than what is good for UK plc.

I know that it has been mentioned many times in this Chamber, but the story of the loan to Sheffield Forgemasters typifies all that is going wrong with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.

[Mr Binley]

Is the hon. Lady aware that the Secretary of State has said that he is more than happy to receive a further application from Forgemasters?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Brian Binley (Northampton South) (Con)]

Today has been a revelation to me. I understood that denial was a medically treatable condition, but I did not know that it was a collective condition. Today has opened my eyes in that respect. The denial is best illustrated by the shadow Chancellor’s recent statement:

“I don’t think we had a structural deficit at all”.

By golly, we have had a deficit every year since 2002. Indeed, it rose massively to the point when, in 2010, we were borrowing £1 of every £4 we spent. If that is not a structural deficit in anybody’s book, I do not know what is.

This matter is best understood by recognising the growth in public sector employment of 20%. More than 1 million new people now work in the public sector. That productivity barely rose in some areas and went down in others shows how successful that was. That is an unbelievable fact that any businessman would say is the road to bankruptcy. That is exactly what the previous Government did to this country. Thank God we had an election and a change of Government.

I will move on to other areas in which the previous Government let down British industry. First, let us consider employment tribunals. When I was in business, I stood in four tribunals and won each of them. On each occasion, I was told by colleagues, “Pay ’em.” The previous Government created an aura of commercial blackmail that is totally unacceptable. Thank God the present Government are doing something about that.

[Mel Stride]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is essential that we do something about claims to employment tribunals, which increased by 57% in 2010? They are feeding lawyers and depriving businesses of investment.

[Mr Binley]

My hon. Friend is right. There were 236,000 cases last year—a record figure. That suggests that something needs to be done. This Government are doing something about it and I am grateful.

The cost burden of regulation on business increased by £10 billion a year under the previous Government. That money could have been used for investment, but instead it had to be spent on complying with regulation after regulation, which the previous Government had gold-plated.

[Nadhim Zahawi]

My hon. Friend has a long and respected record in business. Does he agree that there is a lack of recognition that regulation is one of the major factors that holds back small business, along with access to finance? The lack of the word “regulation” in the motion demonstrates the lack of understanding among those on the Opposition Benches of the pain of small business.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Binley]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I am delighted that he is a member of the Select Committee on Business, Innovation and Skills, because he brings such knowledge to it. Perhaps with his help, we can get the changes we need to ensure that small businesses thrive in this country again. They have found it very difficult over recent years.

The working time directive was introduced in 1999 and has cost businesses £1.8 billion a year. The vehicle excise duty regulations introduced in 2000 cost businesses £1.2 billion. I could go on. I refer Opposition Members to the words of David Frost, the director general of the British Chambers of Commerce:

“Businesses are facing the toughest economic environment for a generation. Company cash flow is being squeezed and unemployment is growing as a result”

of regulation.

Let us lay that at the door of Opposition Members and let them deny it.

Let us consider the plethora of schemes that the previous Government introduced with a shotgun effect. They were all good headline-catching schemes, but they forgot one thing. Often, it is not what one decides to do that matters within a given set of parameters, but the way that it is managed. Of course, the previous Government did not know anything about management, because most of them had not turned a penny in the real world in their lives. That experience is vital in understanding small and medium-sized businesses, as I can tell them and as the British Chambers of Commerce has told them. The number of companies helped by the enterprise investment scheme fell from 2,379 in 2001 to 1,073 in 2008. It ceased to be effective to a considerable degree year by year. That underlines the fact that it needed to be managed properly.

I could talk about many other areas in which the previous Government failed the people of my constituency sizeably, but I want to make one particular claim, which is supported by information in the Library, so nobody can jump up and question it. The number of unemployed claimants in my constituency rose to 3,460 under Labour. That is 7.4% of the economically active working population. In 1997, my constituency was only 440th among the 630 or so constituencies in terms of the highest proportion of claimants. It rose to 132nd under Labour. There was such a big effect in Northampton, because 94% of the people who are in the private sector work in small and medium-sized businesses. That is how much the previous Government helped my constituents.

As I have said, I could go on. I could talk about a number of schemes, but time is limited. The truth is that the manufacturing industry is beginning to grow. My town has the fastest rate of employment growth in the country. That has only happened since this Government came to power. They have created a new confidence and a new belief that we have a Government who help small and medium-sized businesses. David Noble, the chief executive of the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply, said:

“UK manufacturing steamed ahead in January as the sector continues to expand quicker than even the most optimistic amongst us could have predicted. As well as improved market conditions abroad, demand in the UK market also showed signs of growth. This is the much needed kick start to 2011 everyone in the sector was hoping for. A very different picture from last year.”

That message will be repeated by small businesses in my constituency again and again. I have one plea, however: they need help from this Government, and they need more cash to help sustain the growth agenda. It is not happening, and I ask the Secretary of State to ensure that we put our money where our mouth is. If we do not, the growth agenda will be much more difficult to sustain.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Weir]

Again, we hear, “It is almost there, it is coming”, but it is not here. Help is needed now. The Merlin process seems to have stalled—we were told that there would be announcements, but they have not come. If they do not come soon, it will be too late for many businesses.

I turn to the second point that I wish to discuss. I agree with the Secretary of State that it is ridiculous that there is no mention of the Post Office in the motion. I tabled an amendment to that effect, but Mr Speaker did not select it. I suppose that, to be honest, it is unlikely that the Secretary of State would have supported it even if it had been selected.

If we are talking about growth, we have to remember that a postal service is an engine of growth for many small companies. Many of them are very worried about it. This morning I chaired a session of the Westminster eForum at which we talked about Royal Mail’s universal service obligation. It was interesting to hear the Federation of Small Businesses say that when the Government initially talked to it about privatisation, it was given assurances that small businesses would be okay and that their interests would be looked after. However, it is becoming increasingly worried about what is happening. It points out that in April, first-class mail will go up by 12%, large letters by 13%, a 2 kg parcel by 8% and a special delivery by 8%. Worse still—I find this utterly ludicrous—a business that currently goes to a sorting centre to collect its own mail will apparently be charged £210 for the privilege of doing so. Where is the logic in that? What on earth is going on?

I urge Members to read, if they have not done so, Postcomm’s research paper “Business customer needs from a sustainable universal postal service in the UK”, which was published towards the end of last year. It makes very interesting reading about how small businesses see the postal service.

[Mr Binley]

rose—

[Mr Weir]

Sorry; I have taken two interventions.

Many small businesses continue to use the post, as they do not have the ability to get the special deals that are available from other carriers. Of those that spend between £100 and £500 a month on mail, which include the smallest businesses, 72% have either stayed at the same level of Royal Mail usage or increased it in the past year. Many businesses see e-fulfilment, as I am told we have to call it, as a way to extend and grow their business, but they need access to the postal service. Many are becoming increasingly worried, as I am, about what will happen to the universal service after privatisation. They see a reduction in service as meaning that they will be unable to access business at a reasonable cost. The changes that are already coming in show that that cost will go up and up, at a time when businesses are already suffering from fuel price increases. They have been hit all ways, and action is needed now to help them.

[Gavin Williamson (South Staffordshire) (Con)]

I share some of the incredulity of my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton South (Mr Binley) at Opposition Members’ apparent total denial of the fact that their party was greatly responsible for the catastrophic economic situation that it bequeathed the coalition Government.

I remember talking to a gentleman from a trade organisation who told me that the problem with the previous Government was that they were obsessed with presentation and constantly wanted to change the names of the Department, but did not consider the problems affecting business. I am shocked that a Department led by Lord Mandelson would be more interested in presentation, marketing and publicity than anything else.

[Mr Binley]

I am incredulous that my hon. Friend was surprised at that fact.

[Gavin Williamson]

I put it down to the naivety of youth. Hopefully age will make me wiser.

Industry (Government Support)

Brian Binley Excerpts

Wednesday 16th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

First, I congratulate you, Madam Deputy Speaker, on your election and the hon. Member for Bracknell (Dr Lee) and my hon. Friends the Members for Bolton West (Julie Hilling) and for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery) on their witty and wise maiden speeches.

In 1981, I was one of the organisers of the people’s march for jobs—500 unemployed men and women from the ages of 16 to 60 who marched with dignity to London, such as the mother and her son from Whaley Bridge and the 150 people who joined the march from Birmingham and the midlands. They were the victims of a Conservative Government who stood back and said that unemployment was a price worth paying. That was an error of historic proportions, which severely weakened our manufacturing base, with catastrophic consequences still being felt to this day, including in the poorest parts of my constituency—Birmingham, Erdington.

All that stands in stark contrast to the wise decisions that were taken by a Labour Government in the depths of an unprecedented global economic crisis to embrace industrial activism. Short-term measures were taken such as the scrappage scheme on the one hand and strategic investments in Sheffield Forgemasters, Nissan, Airbus, General Motors and others on the other hand. As a consequence, the scrappage scheme alone created 400,000 jobs, with tremendous benefits for the supply chain in the automotive industry. Those strategic investments have built firm foundations in areas of growth: the nuclear industry and renewables, aviation and the car industry. Nissan is a classic example, with £20 million of public investment levering in £420 million of investment by the company, 50,000 new cars and 60,000 batteries—a good deal for Britain.

We now have the right hon. Member for Tatton (Mr Osborne). He is the Private Frazer of Downing street. “We’re doomed. Doomed,” is his daily refrain. “Labour mismanaged the economy,” is the moan that we constantly hear from Ministers. It could not be further from the truth. By 2007 we had reduced borrowing and debt to beneath the levels that we inherited from a Conservative Government. Then, in a global economic crisis, we borrowed to invest, to boost the economy and the order books of the companies in my constituency, such as those in the machine tool industry—companies such as Dana, Guhring and Micro. All those benefited from the wise and brave leadership given by our Government.

[Mr Brian Binley (Northampton South) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman explain why, when Labour came to office, Northampton was 440th in the long list of areas of low unemployment. We rose to 132nd in that list under Labour. What do the people of Northampton have to thank a Labour Government for, in that respect?

[Jack Dromey]

A Labour Government in the most difficult times did not do what a Conservative Government did in the 1980s—abandon people to their fate. The Labour Government stood on the side of ordinary people and took the necessary strategic long-term decisions to rebuild our manufacturing economy.