Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Kate Green and Vince Cable

Thursday 7th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

T6. The Secretary of State is aware of concerns about anti-competitive practices in the waste electrical and electronic equipment recycling market. What will he do to protect the position of small and medium-sized recycling companies such as Mercury Recycling in my constituency? Will he meet me to discuss this issue and wider concerns?

[Vince Cable]

We have a tough, respected and effective system of competition and anti-cartel policy. If the hon. Lady is concerned about anti-competitive practices, I will certainly raise this with the Office of Fair Trading, but it is an independent agency that makes its own decisions on which cases to investigate.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Kate Green and Vince Cable

Thursday 6th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Vince Cable]

The hon. Gentleman is right. The programme must be demand-led and business-led. When a sector is struggling, as the construction sector currently is, that affects the demand for training; but, as the hon. Gentleman knows, the sector is well organised, with a levy system and a skills training board. We certainly want to see a substantial number of additional trained specialists in the construction sector, so that we do not have to rely on people coming from overseas to do the work, as we often have in the past.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

Although the number of members of ethic minorities who are taking up apprenticeships is improving, there are still patterns of occupational segregation, and ethnic minorities are less likely to be represented in the industry sectors with the best long-term career prospects. What specific steps are the Government taking to ensure that members of ethnic minorities have the chance to take up the best possible apprenticeships?

[Vince Cable]

I have not had that case made to me before. Certainly if there is some element of discrimination, that is unacceptable. I guess there might be a correlation with other patterns in the labour force, but I will undertake to see whether there is any evidence of there being a real problem that we need to address.

Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill

Debate between Kate Green and Vince Cable

Monday 11th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Vince Cable]

That is going rather further than I would want to go with the argument or the evidence.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

The Bill does not contain measures on some of the matters on which the Government are consulting in respect of employment law, following the red tape challenge. Does the Secretary of State intend to bring forward more proposals during the passage of the Bill—in relation, for example, to employer liability for third-party harassment, to the ability of an employment tribunal to make a decision that will then apply to all staff, or to the statutory questionnaire?

[Vince Cable]

I have no such proposals. There is nothing stopping the hon. Lady proposing amendments for us to consider.

--- Later in debate ---

[Vince Cable]

I am not going to give the hon. Gentleman a very precise answer because I will need to check on the exact legal position. I am aware of the concerns, and he is one of several people who have expressed them. I will endeavour to reply to him in writing to give him the precise answer to his question.

A further set of reforms accelerates the Government’s drive to tear up unnecessary red tape. We inherited over 20,000 separate rules and regulations affecting business in the UK. Cumulatively, this regulation stifles growth and strangles innovation, and in the past two years we have launched a concerted drive to tackle the problem. We introduced the one in, one out rule to stem the flow of regulation to business. The aim of one in, one out is not only to force regulating Departments to deregulate more but to change the Whitehall culture to encourage Departments to use regulation only as a last resort. Under the red tape challenge, 20 regulatory themes have been launched for comment on the website, involving more than 3,700 regulations. Decisions have been announced by Ministers on 1,500 of those, of which well over 50% will be scrapped or improved.

[Kate Green]

How will the provisions of clause 51 on repealing some of the provisions of the Equality Act 2010 in relation to the general duty and the good relations duty have any impact on business whatsoever?

[Vince Cable]

I was going to mention that measure at the end of my speech. We see it essentially as a bit of legislative tidying up; we are not going to argue that it has significant impacts on business. However, we can pursue the detailed implications.

The Bill introduces further measures and makes it possible to include a sunset or review clause in any new secondary legislation to ensure that legislation is fit for purpose and is regularly reviewed. It also extends business eligibility for the highly successful primary authority scheme, which allows firms to get assured advice from one local authority on a particular regulatory issue. Often what businesses find most bewildering is not the regulation itself—they recognise that rules are often necessary—but the inconsistent application of the rules so that they have to adjust their systems depending on the whim of a local official. The primary authority scheme deals with that.

Amendment of the Law

Debate between Kate Green and Vince Cable

Thursday 22nd March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Vince Cable]

I am sorry; I do not follow the logic of the question. The Budget is of course fiscally neutral. I have just quoted figures, which the Office for Budget Responsibility has validated, which show that pensioners as a whole will gain five times as much from the increase in the pension and from pension tax credits as from the change in allowances.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

What will the Secretary of State say to people who have saved into a pension all their working lives and who have only modest additional pension provision to rely on, but who will now, completely unexpectedly, see the reward for making that effort to save wiped away?

[Vince Cable]

There is a genuine issue about pensioners with limited income, much of it savings income, which has been progressively ignored over the years. I have fought very hard in Parliament on the issue of annuities reform, as have many colleagues, particularly on the Government Benches. Many of the people the hon. Lady describes are annuitants who have been severely squeezed by the very low interest rates. Despite numerous appeals to the previous Government, absolutely nothing was done about annuity reform. We have made an absolute commitment to end compulsory annuitisation, which will offer far more practical help than any of the things that she and her colleagues are describing.

Let me turn to these millionaires. I agree with the Chancellor that the decision to cut the top rate of tax from 50p to 45p was economically the rational thing to do. I want to focus the debate not on symbols but on substance. I share the emotional reaction of the many people who are disgusted to hear pampered financiers whinging about their taxes. On an emotional level, nobody can sympathise with that. However, we have to deal with the practical realities that were burned on my consciousness as a result of sitting in my place on the Opposition Benches for 13 years, exchanging views on the top rate of tax with successive Labour Ministers from Blair to Brown to Balls. Year after year, they would tell the Liberal Democrats that it was economically stupid to raise the top rate of tax above 40%. That was their message, year after year. Then, a few weeks before the end of their Government—I think it was 57 days—they introduced the 50p rate in order to create a political dividing line. That decision had nothing whatever to do with economics. The point that they had been making over all those years was that raising the top rate in that way would raise relatively little revenue.

Despite the casuistry of the shadow Chancellor’s intervention a few moments ago, in trying to argue that vast sums of money had been sacrificed, line 3 of the scorecard makes it absolutely clear that we are talking about a revenue loss of £100 million a year. That figure has been endorsed by the Office for Budget Responsibility. The changes that have been introduced in the Budget, including increased taxation of high-value property, plugging loopholes and much tougher anti-avoidance rules, will bring in at least five times that amount.