State Pension Age (Women)
Debate between Chloe Smith and Andrew Bingham(8 years, 10 months ago)
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Chloe Smith (Norwich North) (Con)
I am pleased to take part in this debate, and I congratulate those who have secured it and those who are working so hard outside this place to contact their Members of Parliament to talk about this very, very important issue of public policy and the impact of it.
My starting point is a passionate belief that a civilised country provides for families, protects the most vulnerable, helps those who look for work, and supports those in retirement. I am looking for the principles that we might apply to this debate based on the petition that has been presented. As I understand it, the petition raises three particular concerns: the lack of notice; the changes being made faster than expected; and the lack of time to plan. I recognise some of those concerns in what I have heard from my constituents. One told me that they had worked since they were a teenager, and that they were concerned about their own health challenges, their caring burdens and the prospect of re-planning. Other constituents are worried about the way the retirement dates work out. Indeed, one told me in 2011 that
“a woman who is just two months older than me can retire a whole year earlier.”
Again in 2011, a constituent told me that she was concerned about the “double attack” on her. She described how she felt when she received the first notification of change. She said she
“didn’t like it, but eventually accepted it and made the necessary changes to her plans, both mentally and financially”.
She then received another notification of change and was then forced to readjust a second time.
Another constituent put forward a very powerful and emotional argument. She said:
“When I first heard that my retirement age had gone up from 60 to 64 I was shocked and tried to ignore it.”
Those words seem to explain the communication problem that exists. The fact that a person was so shocked that they tried to ignore the problem shows just how powerful the problem is.
Andrew Bingham (High Peak) (Con)
I, like my hon. Friend and many other Members in this Chamber, have had many emails on this matter from constituents. Does she share my concern that the people who are affected by this have worked all their lives and have made plans and are now having to change them? We must try doubly hard when it comes to notifying people on pension issues, because, whether we like it or not, pensions are not very exciting until one reaches a certain age, at which I am now.
Chloe Smith
My hon. Friend puts it very well. Let me repeat what a constituent has more recently told me. She came to my surgery and explained that it had come as a shock to her that she would have to wait until she was 66 before she could retire, she was not informed, and found out only when she requested a pension statement. That goes to the heart of this matter of being informed and of having time to plan.
Community Transport
Debate between Chloe Smith and Andrew Bingham(8 years, 11 months ago)
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Andrew Bingham (High Peak) (Con)
May I say what a pleasure it is to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Nuttall? I think this is the first time I have served under you in Westminster Hall. I congratulate my colleague from Derbyshire, my hon. Friend the Member for Erewash (Maggie Throup), on securing what is a very important debate, particularly in Derbyshire. She mentioned many of the things I was going to say, but I will repeat some of them.
I want to talk specifically about the provision of community transport in my constituency. Despite its name, Glossop Community Transport serves not only Glossop, but residents across my whole constituency, so people should not be taken in by the name. The organisation was started in Glossop, and it is based there, but it looks after the whole of my large, rural constituency. A few years ago, I did a week out with different voluntary organisations, including a day with Glossop Community Transport. During that day, we did a variety of tasks. We went round picking up the elderly and vulnerable. We took them to the local shops and supermarkets. I was to be seen going round with trollies of food for the elderly and helping them with their weekly shopping.
As well as enabling people to get to the shops, the dial-a-bus service provides a valuable social benefit. When I was on the bus, I saw that there is a sense of camaraderie. It is almost like a social occasion; people go out and chat with each other. We talk a lot about exclusion; this is a great way of getting people together. There was a great sense of fun on the bus. A photograph was taken of me on the bus, and a couple of old ladies at the back were pulling faces behind me and stuff like that.
Small Businesses
Debate between Chloe Smith and Andrew Bingham(10 years, 12 months ago)
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Chloe Smith (Norwich North) (Con)
I think that this is my first opportunity to congratulate you on taking the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker. I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris) on securing the debate and all those who supported her at the Backbench Business Committee. To pick up on just one of the points that she made, I agree about the difficulties that are presented by the VAT threshold, which I saw recently in the case of a meals on wheels business that serves my constituents. It is just about to hit the threshold, but its customers are ill-equipped to deal with a hike in prices.
Like my hon. Friend, I look forward to celebrating small business Saturday in my constituency. I also look forward to a discussion that will take place shortly at Norwich business school, whose advisory board I sit on, about how such business schools can be anchor institutions for the small firms in their surrounding area.
In the report, “Growing Your Business”, Lord Young of Graffham drew out just how much more there is to do to open up public procurement to small and medium-sized firms. My hon. Friend the Member for Newton Abbot mentioned the Cabinet Office at the end of her comprehensive list, and I am sure that she would join me in congratulating the Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General on his work to give 25% of Government business to small and medium-sized enterprises. Surprisingly, it is often forgotten that the Government buy large quantities of goods and services on behalf of taxpayers, and there is no reason why small and medium-sized businesses should not take pride of place in that marketplace.
Andrew Bingham (High Peak) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that small businesses find it difficult to deal with Government agencies because they are presented with a bewildering array of things such as pre-qualification questionnaires? Small and micro-businesses do not have a huge army of staff to deal with such nonsense, which increases costs not only for business, but for the Government, because they could have bought what they needed cheaper from a small business in the first place.
Chloe Smith
My hon. Friend could not have made a better intervention because I was pleased to be able to contribute to solving that exact problem when I was a Cabinet Office Minister.
Given a few tools, we can all do much more in our constituencies, and Lord Young is continuing to work on that issue in association with my hon. Friend the Minister for Skills and Enterprise. We must encourage small and medium-sized firms to use Contracts Finder, on which they will find a clear record of all available Government contracts. We should urge local authorities and others to put their contracts on that portal to allow the operation of a comprehensive marketplace.
We should also encourage constituency businesses to use the mystery shopper scheme that the Cabinet Office has introduced, which will help to solve the problem raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Newton Abbot. When small businesses that seek simply to get on and do business encounter poor practice or communication from the public sector, they need a way to solve the problem. The mystery shopper scheme does exactly that, and also gives us a chance to do more to encourage public authorities—whether local government, health, police or fire services, or any similar service—to do more to make their procurement SME-friendly.
Small firms can encounter many problems such as the prevalence of pre-qualification questionnaires and late payment. A care company in my constituency deals with customers who are particularly vulnerable, and tragic havoc can be wrought if a health body makes a late payment to such a company. The motion rightly calls on local government to do its part, and I suggest that better procurement forms an important part of that.
SMEs (Public Sector Procurement)
Debate between Chloe Smith and Andrew Bingham(11 years, 5 months ago)
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Andrew Bingham
My hon. Friend makes a good point, and I will come to something along those lines in a moment.
As I was saying, many small and micro-businesses run tight ships—they are hyper-efficient. Consequently, they can offer products and services at much reduced prices, and every bit equal in quality. However, all the bureaucratic muddle and red tape is not only depriving small businesses of the opportunity to supply but means that public sector bodies are paying more money for the services they procure. The process is costing public sector bodies more twice over. First, someone in the public body must administer all the paperwork, with all the forms having to be read, checked and all the rest of it, so that creates a higher cost for procurement. Secondly, because the public sector bodies are ruling out—shall we say?—more competitive companies by their system, they are also paying more for the products they procure. In many respects, the public sector is paying more for goods; I hate to use the phrase, “paying through the nose”, but it is paying a premium because of its own processes.
About 18 months ago, I held a small business event in my constituency to help my local small enterprises deal with local authorities and other big public bodies, to try to break down some of the bureaucratic barriers that the public sector bodies put in their way; to be honest, sometimes they do so unwittingly. In total, 85 local companies came along to that event, and they all came with a very similar tale. They all mentioned the dreaded pre-qualification questionnaire, or PQQ, which seems to be the bane of every small business person’s life. As the hon. Member for Ogmore said, public sector bodies seem to have a system whereby they say, “This is the procurement package we use, whether the contract is worth billions, millions, thousands or tens of pounds.” It just seems to be the same process and it seems like a sledgehammer to crack a nut.
In discussing the PQQs, I will change the names, because I want to protect both the innocent and the guilty. I have one PQQ here, which is 64 pages long. It was given to me by a local small supplier. I will not say what the company does, because that would give a clue, but we will work on the theory that it supplies wallpaper, because that fits. Obviously, I do not want to disclose the company owner’s details, because it is not fair on him. He tendered for a fairly modest contract with a public sector organisation, which will also remain nameless. He sent me a PQQ that is 20 pages long and asks for information such as cash-flow forecasts. It also asks for a bank letter outlining the company’s current cash and credit position. I am sure that the bank would supply that information, but from my experience of dealing with banks I would say that it will probably charge him.
Looking at the level of detail of the contract, I see that there is an extra cost. It does not matter about all the paperwork and all the rest of it; the company owner has got a bill from his bank. The public sector body wants details of his company’s equal opportunities policy, its health and safety policy and it even asks him to
“describe your organisation’s current workforce development and training programme”.
The company is a micro-business that employs three or four people, supplying goods—as I say, we will go with wallpaper—and it has to supply all that information. I read the form with incredulity; I have even torn the page off, so that the cameras in Westminster Hall cannot pick up who sent it to the company owner. I could go on at great length, and given that we have the time I could actually read the whole of a 64-page PQQ I have, because I could get it all in before the debate finishes. In fact, I was thinking that there are people who collect different things, and we should have a name for people who collect PQQs, because I could be one of them.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Miss Chloe Smith)
I hope that my hon. Friend will excuse me for quickly intervening. I am sure that he is right to want to protect those involved, but anyone watching this debate and regretting that they cannot pick up the details on camera might like—if they know the details—to go to the Mystery Shopper page on the Cabinet Office website, which I will discuss in my response to the debate, and before the end of the debate we can “shop in” some bad practice.
Miss Smith
On the first question, all central Government contracts of more than £10,000 must be advertised on Contracts Finder; I am sure that those who have their smartphones out will find it a helpful source of information. The second question brings me to a point that I shall make later. We need to leave some areas of professional competence for the contractors themselves. It may be under the headings that the hon. Gentleman mentioned. There are instances in which a particular contractor will need to find particular characteristics that suit their procurement.
I turn to a couple of other points that have been made. Hon. Members have asked for there to be ways of giving feedback to unsuccessful bidders. We have used the mystery shopper to provide that in some cases; I am interested in how we can encourage it as a far wider practice. I will also give an example of the move away from frameworks, another point made earlier. In some cases, it can be an instance of poor procurement practice when frameworks are used inappropriately. They can certainly be a blunt instrument. I point hon. Members to the example of the G-Cloud, a way that we are procuring for IT across Government that has done away with frameworks entirely. There are many more such examples.
PQQs, or pre-qualification questionnaires, are undoubtedly a burden to small and medium-sized businesses. To address that, we have eliminated their use in 15 of 17 Departments for all central Government procurements under the EU threshold of £100,000. The two Departments still using PQQs are doing so only for security reasons.
Miss Smith
I am terribly sorry, but I need to finish some points before I run out of time. For procurements that still require a PQQ, we have introduced a much simpler standard set of questions that reduces the burden on suppliers.
On late payment, we recognise that being paid promptly is vital to enabling SMEs to manage their cash flows. Again, we have addressed that by making Government a fair payment champion. We have a policy of paying 80% of undisputed invoices within five days and ensuring that prime contractors also pay suppliers in tier 2 within 30 days. We expect our suppliers to follow that example.
My hon. Friend the Member for High Peak briefly mentioned the fact that Government can end up paying through the nose for procurement. I make the point in passing that we are one of the best clients going. I think that the hon. Member for Islwyn said that, actually, we have some of the best credit available as a Government purchaser. We can take advantage of that and get results for the taxpayer, which is crucial because that is whom we are procuring for, as well as shaping the market. I suggest that fair payment is a way in which we can do that.
I turn to a couple of other points about assistance to SMEs. Hon. Members have spoken about the small business research initiative, under which we have provided more opportunities within Government for SMEs. To address a further point made by the hon. Member for Islwyn, we have also produced a series of “top tips” videos that help SMEs and voluntary organisations pitch for Government business. Again, he should get out his smartphone right now and find out how good those videos are.
On how the measures are giving results, I should say that direct spend with SMEs across Government has increased from the paltry 6.5% when we took office to 10% in 2011-12. We will shortly announce, two years on, the results of our efforts in that area. SMEs have also benefited from a further 6% in indirect spend through the supply chain in 2011-12, meaning that spend with SMEs across Government has increased steadily since 2010.
Looking ahead, we must keep up the pressure on Departments. The hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah) will be delighted to know that I am personally scrutinising plans from Departments to increase their spend with SMEs and sharing them with the Prime Minister throughout. We have appointed SME champions to do so at ministerial and official levels in all Departments.
Hon. Members will also be pleased to know that we are working closely with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills to ensure that unified advice is available to SMEs. To conclude, we are aware of the recommendations in Lord Young’s work, and I want to do more to support growth with SMEs throughout the public sector.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Chloe Smith and Andrew Bingham(12 years, 7 months ago)
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Miss Smith
I thank the hon. Lady for raising that example in which the couple’s ages are more distant from each other than is the norm. She makes an interesting point. However, as I said in my initial answer, there are arrangements for those over 60 and for those in retirement in the tax credit system, the pensions system and other benefit systems. As I have said in previous Question Times, the economy is moving, there are work vacancies out there and we believe that the changes to working tax credit are fair. For example, they place couples on a par with lone parents.
Andrew Bingham (High Peak) (Con)
16. What steps he is taking to increase the availability of credit to small businesses.