Enterprise Bill [ Lords ] (First sitting)

Lucy Frazer Excerpts

Tuesday 9th February 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Bill Esterson]

I am pleased that the Minister is confirming that from a sedentary position.

If the small business commissioner is to be as effective as possible on late payments, we need someone who can work not on the basis of a press release or the exhortations of Members of whichever House but constructively with businesses, learning the right lessons and creating the right solutions. That means not being an appointee of the Secretary of State, doing the Secretary of State’s bidding or wondering whether the Secretary of State will intervene with the potential for abolition.

It is important to note that the Institute of Directors has been forthright in its support of the amendments. The institute represents many directors, owners and operators of small businesses, so I suggest that it is worth listening to what it has to say:

“Together, these amendments would give the Small Business Commissioner a stronger footing from which to be a champion for small business. We fear that the possibility of abolition by the Secretary of State could potentially negatively impact the ability of the Small Business Commissioner to challenge that same Secretary of State. We hope for and anticipate a positive working relationship between the Commissioner and the Secretary of State”.

[Lucy Frazer (South East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David. I want to ask the hon. Gentleman a question, for clarification. Do these two clauses stand alone, or are they conjoined? Would the hon. Gentleman be pressing for the appointment he suggests if there were not a successful amendment to include public authorities?

[Bill Esterson]

We are debating the first set of amendments, which are about appointment and dismissal. We will come to public bodies later. However, it is relevant to speak about them both; I have done so because the independence of the commissioner enables small businesses to have confidence that they can deal with the commissioner and that the commissioner will not be constrained by their relationship with Government, either in relation to other businesses or the public sector.

--- Later in debate ---

[Anna Soubry]

As I said, I am going to try to confine my remarks to the amendments.

[Lucy Frazer]

The Minister is making a very good point about why public authorities are in a very different position from private entities, but does she agree that the duty of candour in litigation is an additional reason why they are different? When a case is taken against a public authority, it has a duty not to fight it as a commercial entity; fairness, not commercial success, must prevail at the end of the day. That is an additional reason why public authorities are in a different position.

[Anna Soubry]

I am grateful for my hon. and learned Friend’s very sensible contribution. She reminds us that this is not necessarily about Government. Public authorities are a huge sector in our society, and they rightly have different levels of accountability.

I remind hon. Members of Lord Mendelsohn’s words when this matter was debated in the other place:

“Of course, the origins of the Small Business Commissioner in Australia…came from very different circumstances and functions. In fact, late payment was never really part of the role. It still does not do that much.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 26 October 2015; Vol. 756, c. GC116.]

We can learn from that experience, but we need to understand that it has different roots and seeks to tackle different problems. We can learn much from it about the qualities needed in the small business commissioner. We must ensure that he or she focuses on the real mischief, which is late payment between bigger and small businesses. We are determined to tackle that problem.