Oral Answers to Questions
John Penrose Excerpts(1 month, 3 weeks ago)
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Kevin Hollinrake
The hon. Gentleman is right to raise this issue, on which we do much. For example, we make sure that people can anonymously report the underpayment of the national living wage through either His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs or ACAS. It is really important that we do that. We have labour market enforcement undertakings and orders, and we provide the tools for serious cases. As of April 2022, 40 employers were on labour market enforcement undertakings and 18 employers have been prosecuted. The message should be loud and clear to employers that if they do not comply with the law, we will take action.
John Penrose (Weston-super-Mare) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Kevin Hollinrake)
My officials are co-ordinating and leading on the drafting of the road map, which will set out the Government’s ambition for future smart data scheme development across seven different sectors. We will publish that very shortly.
John Penrose
I am delighted to hear that the road map is coming very shortly. My hon. Friend will recall that I asked this question just before Christmas and he said it would be out in January. We were then hoping it might be coming out in yesterday’s otherwise excellent Budget, but it did not. Other countries are coming up on the rails and trying to overtake us. The noise of the approaching herd is growing in our ears, so can we please move as fast as possible on this?
Kevin Hollinrake
My hon. Friend is right to hold our feet to the fire on this. We are pressing forward and we are determined to get it right, not just out quickly. He rightly said that I set the ambition to get it out in January, and that has put officials’ feet to the fire as well in getting it out. I signed off the road map yesterday, so it should be out very shortly. I do not agree that other nations are hot on our heels on this issue, as we are way ahead. There are billions of calls in open banking every month, and millions are using this every day without even knowing it. We are going to extend those opportunities to energy, telecoms and, crucially, small and medium-sized enterprise finance, making the journey for SMEs to get business finance far easier.
Oral Answers to Questions
John Penrose Excerpts(5 months ago)
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Ms Ghani
The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. This is not a victimless crime; it impacts shops, workers and customers. Credit is due to the hon. Gentleman for visiting the shops in his constituency. Overall crime is down by 54% since 2010, and down by 10% since last year. However, he is right that shoplifting is up, which is why the action plan is so important. The action plan works for our high streets because it is about ensuring that the police are determined to collect evidence and to go after repeat offenders and organised gangs.
Project Pegasus is key because it is a public-private partnership. We have created an extra offence, with a longer sentence, for those who are violent towards a shop worker. With those extra programmes of work and evidence collection, more people will be convicted, so those who are involved in crime against shops will spend some time in prison.
John Penrose (Weston-super-Mare) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Kevin Hollinrake)
The CMA has a primary statutory duty to promote competition both inside and outside the UK for the benefit of consumers, which provides the CMA with a clear, strong focus on delivering for consumers. In our recent steer to the CMA, we did point out how very important it is that it focuses also on economic growth.
John Penrose
Regulators such as the CMA have huge powers, so Parliament must give clear instructions about how those powers should and should not be used. Does the Minister agree that the CMA’s instruction is a model of the kind of clear and strong legal duty that leaves no doubt in regulators’ minds about the job that Parliament has asked them to do. Will he join me in pushing for equally clear and focused duties for other economic regulators where, sadly, the same cannot currently be said?
Kevin Hollinrake
I thank my hon. Friend for his question and for his very important work in this area. I know that reducing the regulatory burden is a cause that is very close to his heart, and to the hearts of those in the Chamber today who supported his amendment in the recent Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill. That view is also shared by myself and by the Secretary of State. We are very keen to make sure that, as well as ensuring that sectors are well regulated, our economic regulators focus on competition and economic growth.
The Minister of State, Department for Business and Trade (Greg Hands)
It is difficult to comment on tariffs in live negotiations, but I would say two things to the hon. Gentleman: first, this country imports very few eggs from abroad, and secondly, anything that happens with imported eggs would not change our standards on food imports, food safety and animal welfare in this country.
John Penrose (Weston-super-Mare) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Kevin Hollinrake)
I am not known for my coyness. My hon. Friend has done very important work in this space, and we share his ambition: I chair the Smart Data Council, and we are planning to open up databases right across our economy to allow for more competition in the worlds of energy, telecoms, and buying and selling houses. He has been a great champion of all those measures. I am very keen to bring forward the roadmap that my hon. Friend has referred to, hopefully as early as January next year.
Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill
John Penrose ExcerptsMonday 4th September 2023
(7 months, 3 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 View all Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Commons Consideration of Lords Amendments as at 4 September 2023 - (4 Sep 2023)
Kevin Hollinrake
We intend to launch the consultation by the end of the year, and we would like the regulations in place as soon as possible. It is quite clear that we want to do that. We all agree on the transparency—I agree with the right hon. Gentleman’s point that sunlight is the best disinfectant. I am absolutely keen to do it, but we must make sure we do it right. We do not want any unintended consequences. It is right that we consult widely with the different sectors to make sure that this legislation—and the regulations, when they come—are fit for purpose.
John Penrose (Weston-super-Mare) (Con)
When my hon. Friend does his consultation, will he reassure those of us who are anxious to maintain the distinction between significant control and general beneficiaries? If he is going to try—rightly—to protect minors for example, who he mentioned in his earlier remarks, will he focus on people who may be misusing trusts because they have control of them? That might be trustees—in some cases it could be beneficiaries if they have effective control of the trustees as well, but in many other cases it will not. Will he try to make sure that he makes that distinction? It is absolutely essential and reads directly across from the persons of significant control legislation that we have elsewhere in disclosing information about shareholdings as well.
Kevin Hollinrake
I thank my hon. Friend for all his work in this area. He makes the point very well. We need to ensure that when we bring forward these measures, they are properly considered and do not result in unintended consequences. He may want to raise those points as part of that consultation when we launch it.
The Government firmly believe that their own amendment and their commitment to consult better achieve the aim of improving trusts’ transparency, as intended by Lords amendment 117, while ensuring that we have time to analyse and stress test the risks in greater depth, including legal risks. We therefore do not support the amendment.
Lords amendment 151, in effect, removes the threshold, as right hon. and hon. Members have already raised, that the Government introduced as part of the failure to prevent offence, which exempts small and medium-sized entities. As I have set out, the Government are extremely mindful of the significant pressures that small companies are under, and do not want to place unnecessary and duplicative burdens on legitimate businesses.
Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill
John Penrose ExcerptsWednesday 17th May 2023
(11 months, 2 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill 2022-23 View all Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill 2022-23 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Kevin Hollinrake
My hon. Friend makes a good point. I wish him the best of luck in the election this afternoon. It is for a very important Committee that will scrutinise this legislation. The final offer mechanism is innovative and represents a positive way forward, in that it will bring parties to the table and they will both have to make sensible offers relating to how they see a fair resolution. This will avoid them putting unrealistic claims on the table, and it could well help the news industry and many other sectors.
John Penrose (Weston-super-Mare) (Con)
Like my hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins), I was concerned that the Minister might be moving on from part 1 a fraction early. This is a welcome Bill that will do an enormous amount of good, and it has allowed me to tick off a large number of the recommendations that I made in my report, which he referenced earlier. The concern about the Digital Markets Unit’s powers is not that they are not good enough; it is that they might over time add more and more of a regulatory burden as ex ante powers build up over the years. Does he have thoughts on how he can ensure that, after those ex ante powers have been in place for a couple of years as regulations, the CMA can analyse whether they could perhaps be replaced by pro-market reforms?
Kevin Hollinrake
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his engagement on this. We have discussed this at length many times, both in my role as a Minister and in my previous role as a Back Bencher, when we looked at the best form of regulation. I think we both agree that ex post regulation is preferable to ex ante regulation, as is a pro-competitive environment, as I said earlier. We should step in only when there is market failure. Of course we should look at the powers and ensure that they are being used wisely, and I have confidence that the CMA will do that. There are a number of checks and balances on the CMA and the DMU, not least through the competition appeal tribunal and the courts, which ensure that decisions are valid and worthwhile, but we should also have a good debate on how we scrutinise the DMU and CMA generally. Obviously they report to Parliament every year, and the Select Committee work is also important. I think that my hon. Friend and I would agree that the best way to regulate markets is through competitive environments, and that is what we should always favour in this discussion.
Kevin Hollinrake
The annual cost to business is £178 million, which we must consider carefully when we bring forward new regulatory burdens, but most people will think that the measures are needed because there is a huge consumer benefit of roughly £1 billion a year over 10 years, so it is important that we strike that balance. I am not aware that the cost to the state has been calculated, but my right hon. Friend and I are probably most concerned about the cost to business.
John Penrose
I thank the Minister for his generosity in giving way again.
The Minister’s response to the question about regulatory burden mentioned the welcome, necessary and important review of economic regulators. However, he will understand that enormous regulatory burden is created by other regulators. There are only eight economic regulators, but there are dozens of other regulators, many of which create vastly more regulatory burden than the economic regulators, although the economic regulators are not exempt. What plans does he have to address those regulatory burdens, which are much broader and cover much more of the economy?
Kevin Hollinrake
My hon. Friend makes a very good point, and it is why only a few days ago we published a framework for better regulation to look at these things in the round and to make sure we have regulators that serve the public, rather than the interests of the regulator. We do not want to see regulatory creep for any purpose other than consumer benefit, and he and I will continue to have significant dialogue on those issues.
Some Members will argue that we should legislate more like the EU’s Digital Markets Act, by using this Bill to create sweeping, one-size-fits-all measures. However, our Brexit freedoms mean we can draft legislation that drives innovation without placing blanket obligations on firms or creating unnecessary regulatory burdens. Some will respond to the Bill by saying that we should go harder against big tech, but I remind them that the Bill’s primary purpose is to reduce economic harms, to boost competition, to create a fair and level playing field, and to give consumers greater choice and better prices.
We need to act, but we must act proportionally because tech firms make a valuable contribution to the economy and our lives. Big does not equal bad. A war on tech will not create growth. It has already been argued in this debate that the CMA has enough power, and my response is that technology is changing rapidly and our watchdogs need to be equipped to fully support businesses and consumers in this competitive world.
I look forward to engaging with colleagues as the Bill makes its way through the House, and I hope Members will give it their backing so that the Government can continue our work of protecting consumers, increasing competition in all markets and growing the UK economy.
John Penrose
I echo the points about the need for a careful balance between not interfering from this place, while also ensuring accountability. I believe—parliamentary historians will put me right if I am wrong—that about a decade ago there used to be a Regulatory Reform Committee in this place. It was rarely attended and was basically dropped because it failed to command much interest—let me put it that way. May I caution the hon. Gentleman that more committees might not always be the right answer? Perhaps tightening up some of the statutory duties that we apply to economic and non-economic regulators could be a way to ensure that the powers we are handing over, which as he rightly points out can mushroom, are properly applied. That would give Parliament a clear a brief to say “We want you to use these powers in this way,” and Select Committees would have a clear way to gauge whether such powers were being used in the way that Parliament has set.
Darren Jones
I do not claim to be a parliamentary historian, but the Regulatory Reform Committee is very modern history. About two years ago I got a call from the Government Chief Whip, telling me that the Government were collapsing the Regulatory Reform Committee and merging it with mine, but that I should not ask for any additional resource. The Business and Trade Committee now holds, by legacy, responsibility to scrutinise good regulation across the whole of Government. That is the problem. We do not have capacity to do that effectively beyond the remit of our own Department for Business and Trade. The hon. Gentleman is right that if we were to end up with a new Select Committee, being clear about what good outcomes or performance means, how that should be measured, and how regulators should be held to account against those measures, is an important conversation for us to have. If there were to be a new committee, there should be a requirement for it to meet and do that work, and it should be clear about how it was performing those duties.
The concerns that some have expressed about additional Committee oversight, administrative demand on regulators, or the influence of lobbyists, can be anticipated and mitigated. As we have discussed, the House is perfectly capable of drafting Standing Orders that make clear the powers and remits of a Select Committee, and the Committee would not be able to change or interfere with decisions of the Competition and Markets Authority. That clarity would, in turn, reduce the impact of lobbying that some people might be concerned about, and Members would need to declare their interests in the normal way. Even if a Joint Committee of both Houses—I will come to that in a second—were tasked with the oversight of regulators and other agencies across Whitehall, its capacity would be limited to a certain extent because of how many bodies and agencies it would need to look at. The amount of inevitable workload for an individual organisation would be fairly self-contained.
If there were to be a new Committee, I would have the normal expectation of collaboration and co-operation between Committees. Departmental Select Committees would still be able to call and engage with regulators when looking at particular issues, but we would be able to work with it to extend the scope of day-to-day co-operation. I am therefore most worried about whether the House, and by extension the Government, would support establishing such oversight and giving it sufficient resource to do the job properly. We would need additional budgets for additional staff and specialists to do that work; some have suggested that a smaller version of the National Audit Office could be one solution.
It is not only the Competition and Markets Authority that operates as a regulator in the digital market space. That is why a number of regulators have created the digital regulation cooperation forum, which is a welcome intervention and allows for co-ordination between digital regulators. Some have called for that to be on a statutory footing, but my Committee thought that was not necessary. Which Committee of this House is the DRCF directly accountable to? I do not think there is a clear answer. What is the cumulative impact of regulatory interventions in digital markets across digital regulators who are collaborating on their interventions? When I served on the pre-legislative scrutiny Committee for the Online Safety Bill, we recommended that the House should consider a Joint Committee of both Houses. A number of noble Lords in the other place have great interest in this topic, and that could provide a space to consider such issues.
As I have mentioned on a number of occasions, any such enhanced scrutiny to assist Parliament in understanding the consequences of broader remits and decision-making regulators would require the support of Government, because we would need additional capacity to do so. I hope that when he sums up the debate, the Minister might be able to share the Government’s view in that regard.
While I have said that there is insufficient capacity and I have called for additional capacity, of course my Committee and I take our work on behalf of the House seriously. To mark our own performance, in recent years we have taken evidence from 11 of the current 21 and three of the previous additional 14 agencies and public bodies within our remit. I hope that hon. Members concur with my conclusions and that we can persuade the Government to take further action in this space.
Oral Answers to Questions
John Penrose Excerpts(1 year, 1 month ago)
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John Penrose (Weston-super-Mare) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Kemi Badenoch)
We are committed to bringing forward a consultation in the coming months on proposals to reform our approach to economic regulation in the utilities sector. This will include the outcomes of our review of the regulators’ statutory duties.
John Penrose
I welcome the bright and shiny new ministerial team to their roles, and I urge my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, as the new broom, to get this moving a lot faster. Some economic regulators are too expensive, too slow and too soft, so could we use the upcoming competition Bill to refocus them on sharper competition so that consumers get better deals and fewer rip-offs, because otherwise we will miss the best opportunity for years?
Kemi Badenoch
My hon. Friend is quite right. As set out in our policy paper, the duties and functions of Ofwat, Ofcom and Ofgem have significantly expanded since privatisation. I agree that the Bill would enable us to move more quickly, and I would like to work with him to see what we can do to improve regulation more broadly.
Oral Answers to Questions
John Penrose Excerpts(1 year, 1 month ago)
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The Minister for Social Care (Helen Whately)
Sun exposure is one of the most significant causes of cancer. That is one reason why we are working so hard with the NHS to reduce backlogs for people who are waiting for cancer diagnosis and treatment, including by rolling out teledermatology across the NHS to reduce diagnosis times. However, the hon. Gentleman’s question about VAT and skin cancer is a matter for the Treasury.
John Penrose (Weston-super-Mare) (Con)
Steve Barclay
As we heard earlier from the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Neil O’Brien), the major conditions strategy report will deal with those issues. However, it is also important to consider the variation in performance between integrated care boards and how we can raise the bottom quartile to the level of the top quartile—there is far too much variation within the NHS—and to be data-driven, so that when it comes to genomics and screening we can target the outliers more precisely. That is what is behind the issue to which my hon. Friend has rightly drawn attention.