Enterprise Bill [Lords]

Baroness Laing of Elderslie Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. Sadly, we are running out of time. This is such a popular Bill, so I have to reduce the time limit to five minutes.

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[The Minister for Small Business, Industry and Enterprise (Anna Soubry)]

I congratulate everybody—and I mean everybody—who has contributed to what I believe has been a very good debate. I am going to look at the areas of contention and the particular topics in respect of which hon. Members have made good points and raised good concerns. I shall not go through all the clauses and topics in the Bill, but deal with it in the way I have suggested.

This may be a small Bill, but I think it is beautifully formed. Each part of it, each small piece, cog, wheel, nut and bolt is not perhaps in every instance beautifully and finely finished, but if we bring all of them together, it forms a wonderful small machine that is part of the bigger engine—the role of business in our economy. That is indeed what provides jobs and prosperity, and in turn the money that allows us then to provide services for everyone throughout our nation. It is an important Bill.

I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller), who rightly said that it is all about creating the right environment for business. I believe that the Bill is part of that. It is interesting that, with the exception of the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins)—others will correct me if I am wrong—it is only from Conservative Members, such as my hon. Friends the Members for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) and for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse), that we have heard the voice of business from those who have actually run businesses themselves and who, frankly, know what they are talking about.

Let me deal first with apprenticeships. We heard some good contributions, including from my hon. Friends the Members for South Ribble (Seema Kennedy) and for Warwick and Leamington (Chris White) and from the right hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint). I am afraid I had too many enterprising criminals when I was working as a criminal barrister, but I look forward to the contribution that she will undoubtedly make in Committee. I pay particular tribute—[Interruption.] There is a lot of chuntering going on.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. The right hon. Lady is right: there is a lot of chuntering, and if it gets any louder, I will have to stop it.

[Anna Soubry]

Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker. We do not like chuntering, do we?

I stopped speaking because I wanted to pay a big tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi) and my hon. Friend the Minister for Skills for their outstanding work on the advancement of apprenticeships, which will help us to go forward and achieve our goal. We are seeing a golden age of apprenticeships—a revolution in apprenticeships—and people will now appreciate their full worth. That is what the Bill seeks to achieve by enshrining the true value of apprenticeships in law.

I can tell my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Amanda Milling) that there will be a national advertising campaign to promote apprenticeships in the next few months. That is just a part of the great work that has been done by my hon. Friends the Member for Stratford-on-Avon and the Minister for Skills.

In relation to public bodies, I pay tribute to my own borough council under Labour: a record number of apprenticeships were created in the borough. The number rose to 20 over two years, and now, under a Conservative administration, the target is 20 each year. If we can do that in Broxtowe, other local authorities can do it.

I pay tribute to the work of my hon. Friend the Member for Burton (Andrew Griffiths), and, indeed, that of the hon. Members for Leeds North West (Greg Mulholland) and for Chesterfield, in relation to the pubs code. All three made important points today. We must get the balance right between allowing pub companies to invest in our great pubs and securing fairness for tenants. That is what I want us to do, and I believe that we are well on the way to doing it.

Let me now deal with the issue of Sunday trading. I can tell the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) —my friend—that we will introduce legislation to improve the terms and conditions of people who do not wish to work on Sundays. We think it important to protect those workers, so that will be part and parcel of our changes in Sunday trading laws. I must stress, however, that this is not mandatory. We want to give councils the power—a power that many Labour councils want—to make local decisions that are based on the needs of their own people and businesses. If a local authority does not consider such action suitable, it will not take it. As we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington (Victoria Borwick), an authority might want to extend the hours of a garden centre to suit that particular business. It is a question of fine-tuning.

Let me repeat to the hon. Member for Strangford that working on Sundays is not mandatory, any more than it is mandatory to go shopping. Sundays will still be special for those who want to keep them special.

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[Ms Angela Eagle]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. The Minister is spending time talking about provisions that no one but her has seen, because they are not in the Bill. How can that be in order?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

The Minister can choose what she wants to talk about as long as it is related to the Bill. When it is not related to the Bill, I will stop her.

[Anna Soubry]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I specifically wanted to deal with those points, because I think that the hon. Member for Strangford made them better than anyone else.

In the six minutes that remain, I want to talk about the small business commissioner. We heard an excellent speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly) and contributions from the hon. Member for Livingston (Hannah Bardell), my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke, my hon. Friends the Members for Bath (Ben Howlett), for Havant (Mr Mak), for Aldridge-Brownhills and for South Ribble, my hon. and learned Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Lucy Frazer), my hon. Friend the Member for Derby North (Amanda Solloway), the hon. Member for Chesterfield, the right hon. Member for Don Valley, the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright) and others.

I just want to say about the small business commissioner that many will say “Well, it sounds like a good idea, but he or she won’t have the teeth and the powers.” It is important to understand that the many businesses that rightly complain about late payment already have a contract with the other party, so the late payment is a breach of that contract’s terms and conditions and they do therefore have redress to law, as Members have outlined. However, the following good point was made: this is not just about the cost of going to litigation; it is also about the relationship between the smaller business and the other party and it not wanting to undermine that relationship. There is, therefore, a reluctance to go to court. Those people can go to the SBC to make their complaint, but it would be wrong to put that person in some quasi-judicial role given that there is an existing legal relationship between the two parties in that instance and they can go to law.

The other sort of case that we anticipate will interest the SBC is when a small business is in effect making a complaint before a contract has been signed about terms that are being put on them by the other party. They will be able to go to the SBC and raise that complaint.

What happens in Australia has been mentioned. I have spoken to the SBC in Australia and have learned a great deal from his wise words. He does not have any greater powers—[Interruption.] No, he doesn’t—not in relation to late payments. What he does do, however, and what he has achieved by virtue of the huge credibility he brings to the post and the huge respect he has, is change the culture, and that at its heart is what we seek to do. We want to change the culture so those bigger businesses understand that this is no longer acceptable, regardless of whether they put it into their Ts and Cs or just in practice do not pay small businesses in a reasonable length of time. This is about changing culture. That is what we seek to achieve, and I am confident we can do that.

I just want to finish off by dealing with exit payments. I want to say a few words to the hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) and my hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar). I say to the hon. Gentleman that Wales will get the benefit of the extra powers we intend to put in. I pay credit to him for the work he and the Secretary of State are going to do to make sure we extend superfast broadband throughout the whole of the UK—and to make sure everybody can get a proper mobile phone signal, too. That is absolutely critical.

On public sector exit payments, I want to say the following. On Magnox workers, I am more than happy to meet any Members to discuss this important issue in relation to them. On NHS workers, I specifically asked for that work to be done and my officials tell me that no NHS employee on £47,000 will be affected—[Interruption.] Opposition Members say that is not true; I do not know whether they have done the work on it, but my officials have. I am absolutely determined that we will look at these figures when we go into Committee. We will get that evidence and we will make sure that the figures are put to everybody so that we all know the real situation. What we do know is that there is a very small number of workers in the public sector on about £25,000 who could be caught by this—[Hon. Members: “Ah!”] But those are extremely rare conditions. We will do this in Committee. I urge everybody to vote for the Bill.

Question put, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

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[Lady Hermon (North Down) (Ind)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker—[Interruption.]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. The House must be quiet, as I am trying to hear a point of order.

[Lady Hermon]

I am most grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for accepting this important point of order. I think that this is the first time that this has arisen. I am in no way challenging the certification by the Speaker of provisions in this Bill as exclusively English or English and Welsh only. The guidance I seek relates to the Order Paper published for today’s business, which on page 6, under the title “Enterprise Bill [Lords]: Second Reading”, gives a note of Mr Speaker’s certification. At the very end, it states:

“The Northern Ireland Assembly decided not to approve a Legislative Consent Motion in respect of this Bill.”

That unfortunately gives the impression that the Northern Ireland Assembly has considered the whole Bill. Since we are in a three-month trial period, I wonder whether I might have some guidance.

I will stand corrected if this is wrong, but it is my understanding that as of this evening the only provision of the Bill that the Assembly actually considered was considered on 7 December 2015. In a letter dated 9 December, the Clerk to the Assembly wrote:

“I am writing to notify you”—

that is, the Clerk of the House of Commons—

“that…the Northern Ireland Assembly did not consent to the provisions dealing with public sector exit payments contained in the Enterprise Bill”.

To the best of my knowledge, the Assembly has not yet fixed a date to consider whether to pass a legislative consent motion on the rest of the Bill. I am simply looking for guidance on the notes that appear in the Order Paper.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for drawing her concerns to the attention of the House and to my attention, and I will, of course, pass that on to Mr Speaker.

The hon. Lady is correct about the wording of page 6 of today’s Order Paper, and I appreciate what she says about what has actually occurred in the Northern Ireland Assembly, about which I have no information, but I will take it that the hon. Lady’s description is correct, in which case there might be a discrepancy between what has occurred in one place and what has occurred through this Order Paper in this place.

As the hon. Lady rightly said, we are still in the experimental stages of this type of consideration of legislation—[Interruption.] Order. The House must be quiet when I am dealing with a point of order. As I said, the hon. Lady is aware that we are still in an experimental period, and the point which the hon. Lady has made is one that ought to be taken into consideration, and it will be taken into consideration, first, I am sure, by Mr Speaker—I will draw his attention to it—and also, I am sure, by the Procedure Committee, when it looks at how this new procedure is working. I am grateful to the hon. Lady for drawing this matter to the attention of the House.