Corporate Insolvency and Governance Bill

Lord Naseby Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 9th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Naseby (Con)]

My Lords, I greatly welcome the Bill and should like to lodge a particular thank you to the Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer for the depth of their understanding of the challenge in front of our businesses and commerce. I also associate myself with the words of my noble friend Lord Dobbs. Hybridity is very much a halfway House. Just one Member of the Official Opposition, one Member of the Liberal Democrats and one Member of the Cross Benches are here. This would never have happened in any of the previous 46 years in which I have been across the two Houses. It does not really work for any major Bill such as this. At the same time, every business in the land is having to adjust. They have to do it. We should move faster to adjust in this House.

Look at the challenges. One has only to look at yesterday’s newspapers, with stories such as the boss of Lloyds urging the state to take charge of Covid debt, or the warning from the chief of Heathrow that 25,000 jobs are at risk—let alone the people who are dependent on Heathrow. These are huge numbers of people in difficulty.

I had the privilege of speaking on Second Reading of the Coronavirus Bill. I raised three issues. First, the Prime Minister said that we would take action to save the NHS and save lives, and I suggested that the economy should be added to that. Secondly, I suggested that Winston Churchill had Lord Beaverbrook to help him, and a little later on some help came from one of our colleagues to help with PPE. Thirdly, I asked about testing and the WHO recommendation to “Test, test, test”. Rather late in the day, we started on that front.

It is disappointing that SAGE does not have a senior economist to be called on; there is no Keynes in SAGE at the moment. On top of that, we have two further hindrances. The first is the two-metre rule—a huge hindrance. Right at the beginning the WHO said that one metre was enough, and France, Singapore and others have followed. Even if we rely on the science, why, with great respect, do the Government not read the latest issue of the Lancet, which proves almost beyond doubt that the differences between the two are minute?

I know the WHO from personal experience. At the time of the tsunami in 2004, Her Majesty’s Government said that fish were eating the dead bodies of the people who had drowned. I challenged that; I am married to a doctor and my eldest son is a doctor, and the three of us got hold of the WHO and asked it to rule on it. The WHO said there was no evidence at all for it, and the advice from the British Government was withdrawn.

What on earth are we doing on quarantine for travel? We know, and the Government have admitted, that the effect on the virus is marginal, but it has a massive effect on the airlines, the travel industry and indeed our exporters.

The Bill is important. I just think that there are two practical areas that should be considered. One has been raised by my dear and noble friend Lord Hunt of Wirral: “could” should be substituted for “would” when we are talking about the moratorium, and I hope the Government will have a look at that. The other is the repositioning of where HMRC comes in the list of creditors. It seems to me that the change suggested there will adversely affect floating-charge creditors and unsecured creditors.

Having said all that, I wish the Bill a fair passage, and once again thank my noble friend the Minister for all the work that he and his team have put into it.