Enterprise Bill [Lords]
Debate between Gerald Howarth and Kevin Brennan
Kevin Brennan
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. I know that it is difficult to believe—presumably, that is why the hon. Gentleman had to check before making his intervention—but the Secretary of State actually said that the measure was intended to hit fat cats in the public sector, which therefore includes everybody affected by it.
This confirms the understandable anger that is out there. My hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn might add examples of workers from his constituency. Agreements have been made and guarantees have been given. We were told that the provision was to hit public sector fat cats, not employees in the private sector. We have tabled the new schedule, which would exempt the companies listed from the Bill. If the Minister has another way of doing it, as I said to her in Committee, I would be interested to hear it. In Committee she was not able to offer any comfort whatever to the workers of the companies listed in new schedule 1. Her response was disappointing, given the weight of evidence submitted to the Committee and the strength of feeling among hon. Members and their constituents. Workers have made their plans and taken life decisions on the basis of promises that were made to them. As far as we can surmise from the limited information that the Minister is prepared to provide about the Government’s intentions, the Government are going to take action that will affect those workers.
In Committee, the Minister rehearsed arguments about all sorts of scares that may have been put about by mythical people whom she was not prepared to name, but going by the evidence submitted to us, the workers in question will be affected to quite a large extent. We represented the workers’ arguments in Committee and made their case on their behalf, but all we got from the Minister was a response to issues that had not been raised in the workers’ letters or, indeed, by us, and a vague reference to secondary legislation at some later date that will name some as yet unknown entities that may be excluded from the cap. In other words, all we got was an empty sheet of paper. I am afraid that that is not good enough.
We in the House need to know what the Government’s intentions are, and we need to be able to tell constituents who have written to us, and who are directly affected, whether they will be hit by the exit payment cap. Those hard-working people are the definition of strivers. They are the beating heart of this country. Their letters reveal that they are not swivel-eyed lefty loonies or fat cats but ordinary working people, many whom live in the constituencies of Conservative Members.
Ministers have put things in the Bill that are meant to get them a headline in the Daily Mail and The Sun. That is fundamentally why the proposal is so flawed. The reality, when we lift the stone and look underneath, is that it will affect all sorts of people whom the Government did not indicate that they intended to hit. Hard-working people are being betrayed by their Government. They would have made very different assumptions about what this policy meant when they read the Daily Mail headline or even the Conservative party manifesto. That is why, if the Government will not stand up for those workers, we will.
Sir Gerald Howarth (Aldershot) (Con)
I am pleased to follow the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan). I have constituents who work at the Atomic Weapons Establishment in Aldermaston, at the Defence Science Technology Laboratories in Porton Down and elsewhere, so I have an enormously high regard for those extraordinary public servants who contribute so much to the security of our country. I therefore have some sympathy with new schedule 1.
It is easy for the newspapers to produce graphic headlines such as “Civil service pen-pushers get massive pay-offs”, but I am talking about slightly different people. They are not ordinary people in the sense the shadow Minister was talking about; they are really rather special. They work at the forefront of technology to ensure that the nation remains safe and that our realm remains secure. I know from talking to my constituents that people at the AWE, which has been privatised, are very unhappy indeed. The AWE is a unique and important facility. It is the only place capable of designing and producing the successor to our Trident nuclear missile system, and indeed of maintaining Trident until its successor comes into force. I am told that morale at the AWE is at rock bottom. To remove the last major benefit of working there—pay has been historically low because of the decent benefits—risks the nuclear deterrent, in some people’s opinion.
These people are not the only ones to be affected. A constituent of mine who works at DSTL came to see me at my surgery on Saturday. He is a leading scientist, and he brought with him examples of ceramic armour that he had personally developed for the protection of our troops. I do not know how many Members in the Chamber have been to see any of our defence science laboratories. I represent Farnborough, the home of the former Royal Aircraft Establishment, which is now the headquarters of QinetiQ. I have met some of its employees, who used to work in some pretty shabby conditions—no wall-to-wall carpeting, rubber plants or anything of the sort—although they have rather fine offices now in Farnborough, and I have been struck by the fact that they could get a lot more money in the private sector. When I asked them, “Why do you work here?” they replied, “Because we want to give something back to our country.” Those scientists show an extraordinary sense of patriotism, dedication and loyal commitment to our country; in my view, they contribute disproportionately to the defence of the realm.
My constituent told me on Saturday that for decades he had been
“Paying my taxes…Saving hard…Avoiding debt…Obeying the law”
and, of course, “Working hard” to develop these life-saving technologies for members of our armed forces. He went on to say:
“in spite of this…I have received below inflation pay rises since 2004…My pension contributions have doubled…My retirement age has increased from 60 to 67...My redundancy terms & conditions have been degraded significantly…My pay is now 20% lower than MOD colleagues outside of Dstl”.
He drew my attention to the 2015 review of the MOD’s science and technology capability by Sir Mark Walport, the Government’s chief scientific adviser, who said:
“We understand that staff retention is difficult in the mid-career stage. We were surprised that Dstl are able to retain staff (let alone good staff) given the comparative low-pay offered.”
Conditions have not improved owing to the austerity measures that we have had to take, which I understand, but that did not stop the chief executive of DSTL receiving a 30% remuneration increase. In those circumstances, it is understandable that these people do not feel that they have been treated as well as they should have been. The other point about them is that, as Crown servants and the kind of people they are, they do not go around protesting; they come to our surgeries or write us a private letter. They will not write to the national newspapers or stand outside with a placard, because they just want to get on with their jobs. I say to my right hon. Friend the Minister that there is a risk that we may be taking for granted people whose contribution to our national security is, as I said, rather significant.