Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill

Lord Stoneham of Droxford Excerpts

Tuesday 17th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

My Lords, perhaps I may take this opportunity to thank the Minister for the way in which she has led this long and incredibly complex Bill over the past few months. She has been exemplary in offering meetings and has made sure that we have been fully briefed by officials, for which we are very grateful. Whenever debates have raised issues that she felt needed further consideration, she has written to us, thus carrying on a practice started by her predecessor; while he was pretty good at it, she has been exemplary and has won hands down in that race.

We said at the beginning of the Bill that we would like to work closely with her if we could because the Bill was in the right place in what it was trying to achieve and there were many things on which we could agree. Indeed, we felt that in some senses it could have gone further. I hope the Minister agrees that that has proved to be of considerable benefit to the process of getting the Bill to the position it is in now.

I want to make sure that recognition is duly paid to my team, my noble friends Lord Mendelsohn, Lord Mitchell, Lord Young, Lady Hayter and Lady Jones, who have all had to appear at various times during the passage of the Bill because it covered so many different aspects of the Government’s work. We also had the innovation of having a Back-Bench liaison Peer, my noble friend Lord Watson of Invergowrie. As well as taking a particular interest in the PSC register, he also worked very hard to make sure that Back-Benchers were fully involved. That helped to stimulate the debates and get us through the work. We have also benefited from a very hard-working legislative assistant, Nicola Jayawickreme, our former apprentice in our office at the end of the corridor, who has grown in stature and confidence as this legislation has progressed. So apprenticeships do work.

Having spent a lot of time in areas that perhaps we did not expect to when the Bill was first introduced, and having become expert in the intricacies of how pub companies and pub tenancies work and the implications of various activities in that area, as well as lots more, let us say “Cheers” to this Bill as we wish it on its way.

[Lord Stoneham of Droxford (LD)]

My Lords, I endorse the words of the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, by thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, for her unfailing courtesy and competence throughout the transaction of the Bill. I also thank the noble Lords, Lord Mendelsohn and Lord Stevenson, for their efforts to improve the Bill and to work with all of us who have been engaged on it over the past few weeks. I thank my noble friend Lady Janke, who has been assisting me on these Benches. I particularly thank all the officials who have dealt with our replies and the detail of queries that we have had on the Bill throughout the past few weeks.

[Lord Wills (Lab)]

My Lords, I briefly add my congratulations and thanks to the Minister and all her officials for their unfailing help and courtesy in the area that I was especially interested in. I set up and ran a small business throughout the 1980s and 1990s, so I had a particular interest in this Bill. There were many areas where I felt that I might have made a useful contribution. Nevertheless, it is a good Bill and I felt that I should focus my efforts on one area: the protection of whistleblowers. The Bill includes significant improvements in such protections. Again, I thank the Minister particularly for the constructive and thorough way in which she has engaged with those complex legal issues and managed to achieve significant progress.

However, there is still more that could be done. This is a rare legislative opportunity. There are still glaring gaps in protection for whistleblowers and I think the House will agree that those courageous individuals who blow the whistle on their employers, often at considerable detriment to themselves and their families, deserve all the protection that Parliament can give them. When the next scandal in protecting the public happens—as I am afraid it will, unfortunately—and when the inevitable inquiry finds out that more could have been done to encourage whistleblowing, all of us may have cause to regret that we did not do more on this occasion. However, this is a good Bill, which does a huge amount for small business. I welcome it and wish it all the best in its progress on to the statute book.