The Enterprise Act 2002 (Specification of Additional Section 58 Consideration) Order 2020

Lucy Powell Excerpts

Wednesday 8th July 2020 General Committees

[Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley. We noted during this morning’s statutory instrument Committee that many Members had made use of their local enterprises over the past few days to get their hair done. I note that some have not yet done so, although I think the Minister was the first in the queue on Saturday—[Laughter.] He got his hair coiffed to its usual high standard.

The Opposition support these measures. It is important to protect critical public health and crisis mitigation infrastructure from aggressive takeovers. Many usually successful businesses of all sizes that are supporting our communities to tackle the effects of covid-19 are suffering from short-term impacts on their profitability and share prices, and might therefore be more vulnerable to takeovers than would otherwise be the case. We support the addition to section 58 of the Enterprise Act of a capability to combat and mitigate the effects of public health emergencies as a new public interest consideration, placing it alongside the existing provisions for interventions on the grounds of “national security”, “media plurality” and

“the stability of the UK financial system”.

As the Minister has said, the Labour Government used an order similar to the one we are considering today to add the stability of the UK financial system to that list back in 2008, following the financial crisis. There is no doubt that that provision will also play an important role in the months and years ahead.

I appreciate that swift action is required in these times, and the Government have moved quickly to act in this instance. However, the Labour Government did manage to conduct an impact assessment and lay it before the House alongside the 2008 order, so I ask the Minister to consider doing something similar in quite short order, or maybe conduct a formal review of the changes at some point so that we can understand their long-term impacts. That said, we are happy to support the order today.