Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill

Debate between Jo Swinson and Graham Stuart

Wednesday 17th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Jo Swinson]

As my right hon. Friend will know, the Government have made £3 billion available through the green investment bank, which has already started to allocate that money. Some £200 million has been allocated and the first money has been not just allocated but spent. We know that that institution will certainly be a great success.

At the end of our proceedings in Committee, the hon. Member for Hartlepool observed:

“The Committee has been serious about the need to scrutinise an important Bill and about the manner of its deliberations and questioning”.––[Official Report, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Public Bill Committee, 17 July 2012; c. 728.]

The Bill is important. It is also part of a wider Government strategy to promote growth, support business and create jobs. Legislation alone cannot guarantee and generate economic activity, but it can help to provide the right conditions for growth and that is what this Bill does. It contains a suite of measures that will lift unnecessary burdens from business and ensure that markets are fair and dynamic to inspire the confidence of business and consumers alike.

The move to a low-carbon economy is a big challenge and, indeed, a big opportunity for this country. Some analysis suggests a demand for more than £200 billion of investment in the next decade to develop the necessary innovative technologies. The challenge is even greater given how new those markets are and the long-term nature of returns on green infrastructure investment, which may deter private sector investors. The coalition Government are meeting that challenge squarely by establishing the world’s first green investment bank and we have made significant progress.

As we were able to announce earlier this afternoon, we have today made an important step forward in the UK’s transition to a green economy with confirmation of the state aid approval that will allow the bank to make commercial investments. That is a significant achievement and means that the bank is firmly on track to be fully operational in the next few weeks.

The Government are deeply aware of the need to do all we can to support business expansion and job creation. The Public Bill Committee heard from business representatives that reform of the employment tribunal system remains a top priority for their members and that the measures in the Bill will increase the confidence of business to recruit. Our reforms will encourage parties to work together to resolve their disputes outside the adversarial, stressful and often costly tribunal system, which will mean that employers will have the confidence to take on and manage staff.

Good leadership and governance of companies is crucial and there should be no reward for failure. Our reforms to directors’ pay, which are supported by both business and investors, will mean greater transparency and more power for shareholders to hold companies to account while allowing genuine success to be rewarded. A free and open market place is key to a growing economy. Pressure from competitive markets helps businesses to boost productivity and that benefits consumers. The Government are helping by setting up the new competition and markets authority to provide a single, strong voice in this area. It will have a duty to promote competition for the benefit of consumers.

The Bill will also strengthen powers to tackle cartels. Cartels damage the interests of business and consumers alike and I am very grateful to the Public Bill Committee—again, I thank its members—for its considered debate on the issue. As a result of the amendments tabled in Committee by Opposition Members, the then Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb), made it clear that we would reflect on the points made with a view to improving the provisions. As a result, we have refined how we propose to tackle the problem of cartels, but in a way that still delivers the key objective of ensuring that we have effective powers against them.

Unnecessary regulation stifles growth and strangles innovation. In our red tape challenge, we are examining swathes of regulation and scrapping those that are no longer needed. The Bill supports that work by ensuring that any new secondary legislation can be time-limited. The CBI hailed that step as the "big prize for business". We are making specific reforms, including removing the right to claim compensation from employers for breach of most statutory health and safety duties unless employers have been negligent. We are also streamlining the duties of the Equality and Human Rights Commission. Let me state again for the record that we greatly value the work that the commission does and that the streamlining will in no way reduce its impact. The Government are committed to tackling the barriers to equal opportunity and to promoting economic growth. Unnecessary and complicated regulation restricts our ability to achieve that aim. The repeals in the Bill play a part in tackling the red tape and bureaucracy that holds businesses back.

Ensuring that our copyright laws are fit for the modern age is critical to the growth of the UK's creative industries—one of our most successful export sectors. It is also important for those industries that can make use of materials that may be in digital or other form. We have worked closely with stakeholders on those provisions and will continue to do so. The Bill will help to ensure that we strike the right balance on rewards for creative endeavour, sanctions for unlawful use and greater freedoms when an originator cannot be identified.

[Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

I congratulate Ministers on their painstaking work to identify barriers to growth and enterprise. Is the Minister as disappointed as I am that the Front-Bench spokesmen for the Labour party, whose policies contributed so much to our present position, have learned nothing and still oppose sensible, practical measures to get the economy going, add jobs and ensure that we get people out of the despair of unemployment and into the sunlit uplands of well-paid jobs?

[Jo Swinson]

In the spirit of consensus, I will say that, on some issues, Opposition Front Benchers have said that they will work with the Government, but I am disappointed that, on others, they have not done so or recognised what we are doing in the Bill. The Bill is good for business and good for consumers, and therefore good for the UK economy. I commend it to the House.