Enterprise Bill [Lords]

Kevin Brennan Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

The hon. Lady has had plenty of time to consider the issue of Sunday trading and whether she supports the principle or not. There will be plenty of time to discuss that in the House. It will also be discussed and voted on in Committee, so there will be plenty of time for input. It would be far better if she and her party focused on the substance of the issues rather than on process after process.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Is it in order for the Secretary of State to come to the House in the full knowledge that he intends to amend the Bill and to ask Members of this House to vote on Second Reading on clauses that have not even been published? Is not that a gross abuse of power?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Natascha Engel)]

As the hon. Gentleman knows, it is perfectly in order to do so—[Interruption.] Order. This is the Second Reading of a Bill, and if we listen to the Minister, this information might come at later stages. It is in order. The Second Reading of a Bill can be wide ranging. The Secretary of State can mention these things but he does not have to do so, and what happens in the later stages of the Bill is a matter for those later stages.

[Kevin Brennan]

Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am grateful for your ruling—[Interruption.] I am sorry, do hon. Members have something to say? Further to that point of order, would it be in order for the Secretary of State to ask his officials now to go away and publish the new clauses that he intends to insert into the Bill, so that Members taking part in the Second Reading debate today can go to the Library to get that information and incorporate it into their remarks?

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I think I have got the gist of the hon. Gentleman’s point of order—[Interruption.] Order. Of course it is in order for the Secretary of State to ask his officials to do that, but that is up to him. I think that we really ought to move on. This is a Second Reading debate and 28 Members are seeking to catch my eye—[Interruption.] Order. Let us move on.

--- Later in debate ---

[Albert Owen (Ynys Môn) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi). This is a big, clunky Bill that covers four Departments, but today we have the captain of the ship, the Minister for Small Business, Industry and Enterprise, to take it through on her own. She is the sole survivor on the Government Front Bench. I hope that she will be a listening Minister, and will show that when she responds to the debate.

This is not an inspiring Bill, as many have said, but it does support apprentices, and I welcome that. The provisions in part 7 on industrial development will assist the roll-out of telecommunications and broadband to reflect the economic realities of the 21st century. My main issue is with part 8, which covers the restrictions on exit payments.

On apprentices, I am sure that we all agree that training and providing young people with skills and workplace experience is a good thing, but it is vital that we have real training for real apprentices, and that we have real skills for the future. We should not consider the targets alone; we should consider not just the quantity but the quality of apprenticeship schemes.

Part 4 applies mainly to apprenticeships in England, but some provisions apply to England and Wales. Indeed, the Employment and Training Act 1973 applies to Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. Contracts for apprenticeships are contracts for employment as defined in the Employment Rights Act 1996, so conditions for apprentices are UK-wide. English votes for English law might apply to the Bill, so I want clarification from the Minister on that point. I know that now is not the time to go over the anomalies of EVEL, but it is important that there is clarification because of the cross-border issues. People in Wales might have apprenticeships with companies in England, and such provisions would therefore apply to them. However, it is good that the Government are valuing apprenticeships and I support them on that.

The provisions on industrial development allow financial assistance of £10 million to £30 million to be given to projects under section 8 of the Industrial Development Act 1982 without a resolution from the House of Commons. As my hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle) said, that is a good thing, but a very small thing. Again, I want clarification from the Minister—who is concentrating, I am sure—that this applies to Welsh Ministers. If it is a UK project in Wales, will Welsh Ministers have the resources to roll out broadband in Wales?

I welcome these provisions, which are designed to get telecommunications rolled out across the United Kingdom. I have long been an advocate of universal broadband and I welcome the Prime Minister and the Government’s U-turn on universal coverage. From time to time—[Interruption.] The Minister says “What?”, but if she had listened to Department for Culture, Media and Sport Ministers she would have known that they were dead against it up until Christmas, and that they have now changed their minds. I hope that roll-out will now happen. I would like a pilot scheme on the Isle of Anglesey. It is an ideal place to have it: an island community on the periphery of this country. If it works there, it can be rolled out across the rest of the United Kingdom.

The Bill will cap exit payments, and that is important. The proposal is designed for city hall chief executives, but the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi) was wrong to say that it will apply just to fat cats. Nurses are not fat cats, and workers on nuclear installations in my constituency are not fat cats. We need to look at this issue.

The Treasury has the power to restrict the public sector workers covered by this measure. I would add to the list of exclusions, which already includes employees of the Royal Bank of Scotland, the Magnox employees in my constituency, who do difficult, dangerous nuclear decommissioning work. They have been caught up in this because the ONS deems them to be in the public sector. The Secretary of State said, “We don’t listen to the ONS.” I would ask the Government to look at exemptions for Magnox workers. There are 23 constituencies that have Magnox estate, with Magnox workers, in them—14 are Conservative, five are Labour, three are Scottish National party and one is Plaid Cymru, so this is not a partisan trade union issue. This is indeed important.

These workers feel let down. One of the 120 constituents who have written to me said:

“To retain highly skilled workers in the nuclear sector, employees were promised that their contractual employment and pension arrangements would be safeguarded”.

If the Bill passes in its present form and does not exempt Magnox workers, they will be unfairly penalised. I think that that is an unintended consequence of the Bill, which is, as I said, intended to get the so-called fat cats. However, I am talking about decent, hard-working men and women on the Magnox estate who have been in the sector for a long time. When they negotiated their wages and their terms and conditions, they would often forgo wage increases to better their pension pots. They feel let down that the Government are looking to take away their conditions of service.

[Kevin Brennan]

Is it not also important to note not just that these workers should be classified by the ONS as being in the private sector, but that they are in fact private sector workers, yet they are being caught up in this Bill very unfairly?

[Albert Owen]

Yes, the Government recently put the estate out to tender, and it was won by a private company. Although, technically, these are Magnox workers, they work for various private companies in the decommissioning sector. I do think that this is an unintended consequence.

I ask the Minister to talk with her Treasury colleagues about this issue to get an exemption. Leaving this to mandarins in the Treasury is not good enough. Magnox workers feel let down by the Government, and the Government can and should act to exempt them from the Bill. I repeat: they are not fat cats, but decent workers.

If I had more time, I could talk about the Green Investment Bank, which I supported under the last Government. I worry about its privatisation, and my concerns about moving it to the private sector are very real.

I am surprised to see Sunday trading as part of this process. We should have a proper debate about the issue, and it should have been in the Bill so that we could see exactly what the proposals entail. The public do not want changes, although some businesses do, and I understand that. However, I think we have the balance right as it stands now on Sunday trading, and that is why I oppose changes to leave decisions on Sunday trading to individual areas. We should keep Sunday special—that is what the House agreed when it had the opportunity to have a full debate, but it has been denied that opportunity now.

Let us get those exemptions for workers, let us support apprentices and let us roll out broadband through grants.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

We have had a very good debate, with 25 speakers from the Back Benches. I congratulate everybody on their contributions. I will not go through them all because of the time available, but I will say it has been a very interesting debate.

A lot of Members have tried to categorise or describe the Bill. My hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle) said at the outset that it is easier to say what the Bill is not than to say what it is. Clearly, yet confusingly, it is not what it is called: it is not really the enterprise Bill. It is not a well-thought-through coherent visionary piece of proposed legislation that sets out a clear strategic industrial strategy to use every lever at the Government’s disposal to promote British business and enterprise to ease the path for British exports—a real problem at the moment—and take on the underlying fundamental problems of the British economy.

Instead, the Bill is, to use yet another description, a bit of a lucky dip: stick a hand into the bran tub and we will not be quite sure what will come out. Long-serving, modestly paid workers in the public sector—in some cases, as we have heard, even in the private sector where workers, including those at Magnox, have been privatised—might want to remove their watches and rings before they put their hand into the bran tub. The Government are not just after top earners with their exit payments cap; they are drawing on those who have worked loyally for many years on modest pay. They are, as the Secretary of State would say, fat cats. That is what he called them in his opening remarks. He said this provision would capture fat cats. What a disgraceful thing to say about loyal public and private sector workers who will be caught by the provisions. The Government will have to think again and look very carefully at the effects of the provisions. We will scrutinise these parts of the Bill extremely closely in Committee to see if the people the Secretary of State talked about really will be caught by the provisions. Every single one of those individuals will be insulted by what the Secretary of State said earlier on.

We now hear that the Government are adding another little surprise to the bran tub. They are introducing changes to Sunday trading hours, having abandoned previous attempts and having studiously avoided putting the proposal in the Bill when it was introduced in the other place. We now hear they intend to table amendments to the Bill tomorrow. They were not prepared to let us have them today by putting them in the Library, as we asked for. There are, of course, bishops in the House of Lords. I wonder whether the Government were afraid to mention Sunday trading when the Bill was going through the Lords. I wonder whether that had anything to do with it.

How very convenient for the Government that the result of their consultation on Sunday trading should be published the day after Second Reading in this House and not when the Bill was going through the House of Lords. How very unfortunate for the House of Commons that the Government, with all the resources at their disposal, could not manage to publish the consultation before today’s Second Reading, despite having had it for five months, or even manage to timetable the debate for a time after the consultation was ready to be published. How interesting that the Government are rushing into Committee next week, without leaving the customary two weekends between Second Reading and the Committee stage to allow this House enough time to prepare and table amendments. That was done without the usual indications when discussions were held. I will not go into what is said via the usual channels. It is enough to say that a whole new controversial proposal has been introduced into the Bill. That is typical of the Government’s modus operandi—governing from the shadows and treating the House and proper democratic accountability with utter contempt.

The Government have no mandate in their manifesto to change the laws on Sunday trading, no compelling case or evidence of significant economic benefit, and no justification for the late addition to a Bill already more than halfway through its parliamentary scrutiny. It has been through First Reading, Second Reading, Committee, Report and Third Reading in the Lords, and now Second Reading in the Commons, without our having seen the proposals. It is not in their manifesto or the Bill we are voting on tonight, and it is not even in the Library of the House of Commons, so extra time will have to be made available on Report to consider it. They will have to give way on that.

It is a lucky-dip Bill. We can pull out some nicely wrapped goodies, but, as so often with a lucky dip, on unwrapping and closer inspection, it might well leave us underwhelmed by our prize. We welcome the proposals for a small business commissioner, but the Government’s proposal is a pale imitation of what is needed. There are more than 5 million small businesses in this country, but the Government anticipate that the small business commissioner will deal with just 500 cases per year. We know about Australia’s experience, particularly of the small business commissioner in the state of Victoria, the splendidly named Mark Brennan—no relation as far as I know, so I do not have to declare an interest. We know from their experience, that for a small business commissioner to work, they must have the right roles and responsibilities. Our Labour colleagues in the other place have strengthened the small business commissioner proposal, but the Government’s model does not live up to the best practice shown in Australia, or to the Small Business Administration in the USA.

We welcome other bits in the bran tub of the Bill, such as the extension of the primary authority scheme—the local authority one-stop shop for business regulation, which the last Labour Government introduced—and the emphasis on apprenticeships. We also acknowledge that the Government want to build on the achievements of the last Labour Government in rescuing apprenticeships from near oblivion and expanding their numbers considerably, but we need to know about their quality and how the Government will pay for their plans, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey rightly indicated. We also need to know how it will impact on the proposed apprenticeship levy and public services.

We welcome the amendment to the Industrial Development Act 1982 and the extension to digital, but that needs to be set in the context of a proper industrial strategy for the country, not an anti-European, laissez-faire free-for-all that will lead to a race to the bottom for jobs, wages and productivity.

The clauses on late payments and non-domestic rates are welcome, but I want to mention two new items in our lucky dip introduced in the other place. The first are the provisions on the pubs code, which has been mentioned already. I recall as a Minister in the Department, back in 2009-10, clearing all the necessaries before proceeding with the proposals for pub tenants. I went so far as to square them off with the Tory Opposition Front Benchers to ensure that they would proceed after the change of Government. Since then, the coalition and now this Government have had to be dragged reluctantly to do the right thing. As has been said, a market rent option at rent renewal was the minimum required for the Government to fulfil their commitments to tenants, so I welcome the Secretary of State’s acceptance of Labour’s amendments in the Lords. It is about time the Government stood up for local pubs, instead of just sucking up to the pubcos.

The other place introduced amendments relating to the UK Green Investment Bank. The proposed privatisation of the bank by the Government, deleting its statutory green purpose, has become even more pressing with the Chancellor’s announcement about Lloyds bank. Do the Government accept that their privatisation proposals are a mess? They said that they would remove the changes made in the House of Lords to the Green Investment Bank, but do they have a mechanism that will satisfy the Office for National Statistics—my hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey asked for that—and guarantee the bank’s green mission? If they do not satisfy the Office for National Statistics, how can they possibly proceed with the privatisation of the Green Investment Bank on those terms?

If it is the wrong time to sell Lloyds, why is it the right time to sell the GIB? Does the Minister agree with her colleague, the hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous), about the privatisation of the GIB? At the Environmental Audit Committee on 26 November, he said to the Minister:

“Why now? The bank has just made £100K profit. Some people might accuse you of selling your turkey on August Bank Holiday and not Christmas Eve.”

The Minister answered:

“I think it is the right time to do it. The market is in a good place and clearly people are interested so let’s get on with it and do it.”

Christmas eve has come and gone, and the Chancellor tells us the market is far from in a good place, so what is the rush to truss up the GIB and sell it at this point? Would it not be prudent, if the Government want to sell it off, to fatten it up first and sell it later rather than now—if indeed it is possible to privatise it without it losing its green purpose? I put that to the Minister.

In conclusion, my hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey commented on the smallness of this Bill’s vision in comparison with the hyperbole of the Government’s rhetoric. It lacks the ambition to set out a real strategy to meet the real challenges facing British business and industry. Some of its contents are helpful; some are likely to have unintended consequences and cause harm to the lower paid, pensioners and industrial relations. We will scrutinise it carefully in Committee and, if necessary, oppose the parts that are likely to cause harm. We shall not vote against Second Reading this evening, but there are issues in the Bill that we will undoubtedly have to divide on at a later stage. If this is a lucky dip Bill, it is one where the main prize—a proper strategy for UK enterprise and business—has been left out with the raffle.