Onshore Wind (Planning Policy)
Debate between Mark Prisk and Christopher ChopeUrgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
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Mr Prisk
The hon. Lady raised a number of points, and she will forgive me if I say that the details on carbon emissions are not within the bounds of the planning decision, which is what this urgent question is about.
Let me deal with two particular issues that the hon. Lady raised. She rightly raised the question of what a “more significant” development is. This will depend on a number of issues. As hon. Members may understand, it may be about the scale and number of turbines, but it could also be about the height, size and massing of them. Clearly, we do not want to ensnare someone who is thinking of having a small turbine in the back garden. That is not the purpose of the approach; this will be set out clearly in the secondary legislation.
The hon. Lady then raised a broader point about retrospectivity. She did so quite imaginatively, I thought, in a number of different ways. Perhaps I can reiterate the point. Where a determination has been made, there will not be a retrospective change, but where an application is in the system, we expect the local planning officers and, if the case is in appeal, the inspectors themselves to give clear and careful consideration to the issue, in the knowledge that it has the potential to be a “material consideration”, which she will obviously understand has a legal implication as well.
The purpose behind this approach is very clear, but I am not sure that the hon. Lady was. We believe in making sure that local communities have a clear voice, and we want the balance between the global environmental issues and the local environmental issues to be made clear. The policy has been clear; sadly, as many hon. Members have found, it has not been applied appropriately on the ground. We intend to make sure that planning inspectors and the planners themselves on the ground are able to do so.
Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
In congratulating my hon. Friend on this statement, may I ask whether he will extend the principles he has enunciated to offshore wind farms, where exactly the same principles apply, particularly in the case of the much-despised proposal for an offshore wind farm in Christchurch bay?
Employment Opportunities Bill
Debate between Mark Prisk and Christopher Chope
Mr Chope
The hon. Gentleman is uncharacteristically disparaging, if not insulting. First, I am not aware of having any troops. Secondly, if he is referring to the fact that I withdrew my two earlier Bills—the Training Wage Bill and the Minimum Wage (Amendment) Bill—he makes a fair point. However, I withdrew those Bills from the Order Paper because their provisions are incorporated in the Employment Opportunities Bill word for word. Having the good fortune to have secured a debate that could go on for five hours, I thought it better to have one, proper debate, rather than three separate debates. If it is the hon. Gentleman’s accusation that I withdrew those two Bills so that they could be incorporated into this Bill, I plead guilty.
So far as forecasting what will happen after the Minister has spoken, I cannot do that. When the Whips ask, “How will you be voting?”, I always say, “I’m going to wait and hear what the Minister says,” because I have an open mind on these issues. The Minister may well announce that he will support my Bill. Indeed, I had the wind taken out of my sails last Friday when a Minister said just that, and my Bill was unopposed on Second Reading.
Mr Chope
I am disappointed about that, because it sounds as though my hon. Friend may have come to the Chamber with his hands tied—perhaps by the coalition strings—and unable to address the arguments that have been deployed. Perhaps he will tell us a little more about that in due course.
Mr Prisk
Of course not. I hope that my reference to the figures on the employment impact will make people reconsider what I suppose is the natural suspicion that if all wages rise, people will be squeezed out of the labour market. The evidence suggests otherwise. The size of the labour market has changed since the minimum wage was introduced, and a series of factors have changed its character, but I take some comfort from the fact that the figures are heading in the right direction. However, we need to be continuously careful that the minimum wage does not start having a negative impact.
The consensus of the research on the impact of the national minimum wage is that it has greatly affected the distribution of earnings but not had a significantly adverse impact on employment, including of those on lower income.
Mr Chope
In trying to undermine clause 2, my hon. Friend has concentrated on the position of those who are already in employment. Does he accept that there are people who are out of employment who are looking for work and genuinely willing to work for less than the minimum wage? Why is he intent on preventing them from entering into an agreement with a potential employer to do so?
Mr Prisk
I will come to internships later. It is important that we get right the balance between internships and work experience.
I want to continue my point about training. Another problem with the Bill is that what is meant by
“an entitlement to training from the employer in skills relevant to the employment”
is unclear. A contractual entitlement to training does not mean that the worker is actually receiving any useful training. Under the Bill, for example, a worker could, if they were working in, let us say, a cold-call centre, undertake that work—that would be allowed—because it could be deemed the best way to learn on the job and be trained. In other words, if an individual’s work involved cold-calling, they could become skilled, as described in the Bill, simply by doing the job, and not actually having a separate training programme with accreditation requirements. The question then is: would this mean that they are entitled to a minimum wage? The Bill is unclear. Under the Bill, two people doing the same job could have different contracts. Consequently, one would be entitled to the minimum wage, but the other, having a contract for a training wage, would not. The danger therefore is that these provisions could be open to abuse.
I turn to the question of how we could go beyond apprenticeships. This involves the question of whether we have some form of accreditation, which is a real problem that the Bill does not seem to address. Were we to have accredited training in certain circumstances, we would probably end up going down the route of the old development rate, which was set out in 2006, and under which there were complex rules and conditions seeking to determine exactly what the training was. That would create real problems for employers, who would want to know what the conditions were and how they would work. Would the opportunities they are providing qualify for the training wage? We would have all these grey areas and loopholes sitting between the existing minimum wage and the training wage. That is a practical problem about which I, as a former employer in the private sector—obviously I remain an employer as a Member of Parliament—would be very anxious. I would not want to find that I am unintentionally breaking the rules or finding that the guidance from the Government has to be so specific and complex that I spend too much time trying to comply with a new set of regulations, when in fact the original system was simpler—so there are real practical problems with this suggestion.
Mr Chope
Instead of putting up Aunt Sallies, why can the Minister not address the question put to me by one of my constituents who is out of work? He is aged 24 and says that he would be willing to work as a trainee for less than the minimum wage—in other words, at a training wage—but at the moment is not allowed to do so. No employer can let him, because the apprenticeship wage only applies to much younger people.
Mr Prisk
I come back to the point that were we to consider expanding this provision, we would need to put in place a system robust enough not to create either the complications I described or the uncertainties that I, as an employer, would not want. The Bill fails to do this. I agree that we need to encourage training, but to be blunt with my hon. Friend, I do not think that his Bill fulfils that task.
Mr Chope
Will my hon. Friend specifically answer my point, because I will be writing to this constituent to set out the Government’s response to his plea that he should be given the freedom to take a training job at less than the minimum wage from somebody prepared to offer him that training?
Mr Prisk
I can understand that frustration, but the moment we make law on the basis of one instance, we create difficulties for the scrupulous. That is the risk we are talking about.
I turn to work experience and interns. I understand the frustration and concerns of my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough. Work experience, whether as a paid or unpaid intern, can be a valuable way for young people to get the experience, skills and confidence they need to start up. The Government want as many internship opportunities as possible to be made available, but we are clear that those who are entitled to the national minimum wage should get it. The example he gave of how he works as an employer accurately describes exactly that position.
Mr Prisk
The problem is that the practicalities affect the principle. That is an important point for my hon. Friend to bear in mind.
Section 3 of the Immigration Act provides for a foreign national’s lawful stay to be subject to conditions preventing his employment or occupation in this country. That is the basis of the UK’s controls on access to the labour market. Foreign nationals who are admitted specifically for the purpose of employment may be subject to conditions of stay which require them to seek authorisation to change their employment. Those who enter for another purpose—study, for example—may be subject to conditions which require them to seek a variation of their conditions of stay if they wish to remain for the purpose of work. The provisions in the Bill are the basis for arrangements for determining the circumstances in which an individual would be allowed to take employment or not, depending on their skills.
My hon. Friend’s proposal appears to remove any legal basis for the operation of an effective control on migrants’ access to the labour market, including the operation of a labour market test in respect of a migrant’s employment, except at the point at which they initially seek entry to the UK. The Bill would therefore significantly undermine the Government’s ability to regulate the entry and stay of foreign nationals, other than at the point at which they seek entry, or to protect the interests of resident labour.
My hon. Friend might well have intended the provisions in clause 1, in respect of recent refusals of applications to enter or stay, to protect against such issues. However, they would not satisfactorily achieve that effect. It is also difficult to see how such provision could be reconciled with the effective operation of transitional restrictions, to which the Government are committed, on labour market access to nationals of new member states of the European Union who are not subject to immigration control but, as foreign nationals, would be covered by the Bill.
Mr Prisk
I think the challenge is to make sure that the asylum system works properly, which is what my colleagues in the Home Office and elsewhere are doing—and doing very ably—despite the mess they inherited. That is the challenge we face.
The national minimum wage is a key part of the Government’s overall strategy to establish fairness in the workplace and to make work pay by ensuring that all workers receive at least a set hourly minimum rate. The minimum wage has brought substantial benefits to a large number of workers, especially women and part-time workers, and it has established basic minimum standards in the labour market. To make the minimum wage optional, as clause 2 suggests, could undermine those achievements and leave some vulnerable low-paid workers open to exploitation.
The Government also believe that the proposals in clause 3 are unnecessary. There are already options available to employers who wish to offer training but not to pay the minimum wage. Certain apprentices are entitled to a lower minimum wage rate. There are some specific exemptions in the law that relate to training—where, for example, an individual is on a specified Government or European scheme, individuals acting in that context as volunteers are not, of course, entitled to the minimum wage.
Making the minimum wage more complex through the introduction of regional rates would have adverse effects on workers and businesses, and make the task of setting and enforcing the minimum wage far more complex. The proposal would introduce potential unfairness for workers, particularly those located near to the boundaries between regions. It is worth noting that when one looks at the evidence, one sees that there is already significant variety within those regions.
As for clause 1, we believe that it would have an adverse effect on the operation of an effective control on migrants’ access to the labour market and would significantly undermine the Government’s ability to regulate the entry and stay of foreign nationals and so to protect the interests of resident labour.
For those reasons, if my hon. Friend seeks to press his Bill to a Division, I have to tell him and the House that the Government cannot not support its proposals.