National Minimum Wage: Sports Direct

Debate between Nick Boles and Emily Thornberry

Monday 14th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Nick Boles]

Mr Speaker, it is always for you to judge whether a question is urgent. I simply acknowledge that this question is important, which is why I am so delighted to answer it. On the hon. Gentleman’s broader points, while the Government believe in deregulation and reducing the burden on business, we have made it clear that certain laws are absolute and must be adhered to: minimum wage legislation is one, along with health and safety legislation and a whole slew of other employee protections. We intend to enforce those protections robustly.

[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

According to the Office for National Statistics, a quarter of million people are not paid the minimum wage. According to the Minister, HMRC has found 26,000 of them. What is the Minister going to do to bridge the gap? If the Minister does not have any ideas—it does not look as though he has a plan—may I suggest something? To not pay the minimum wage is a criminal offence. Why have there not been any prosecutions taken out against directors who are not paying the minimum wage? The department in the Attorney General’s office responsible for taking out prosecutions has been cut for the past three years and there has not been a single prosecution during that time.

[Nick Boles]

The hon. Lady always comes to this House knowing the complete answer to every question, but it might help her sometimes if she would actually listen to the list of measures we have introduced that go significantly further than any enforcement activity the Government she supported ever brought forward to defend their minimum wage. When the set of enforcement measures is working as well as it currently is, I see no reason to take any instruction, however helpfully phrased, from the hon. Lady.

Housing (London)

Debate between Nick Boles and Emily Thornberry

Wednesday 5th February 2014 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Nick Boles)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Teresa Pearce) on securing this debate, which is of vital importance to her constituents and the constituents of many Members of Parliament in London.

It makes a great change for me, as Planning Minister, to face a chorus of opposition from Labour Members. Normally in such debates, I face a chorus of opposition from my own colleagues in the Conservative party. The present position, I must say, is the more comfortable one, though that is not to say that the opposition has not been well argued or passionately felt.

The debate was a fascinating insight into how this House’s proceedings would be improved if 70% of Members were women. With, I think, the exception of the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter), we heard speeches that were passionate but reasonable and that were inquiring and seeking to find the truth, rather than ones that were just delivering a predictable political rant. No doubt we would all be better off if that happened more often.

[Emily Thornberry]

I register my objection to the Minister’s description of my speech as not being a political rant, because it most definitely was.

[Nick Boles]

I unreservedly withdraw that slight to the hon. Lady’s political passion.

The hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead asked a number of quite searching questions, but I must be honest: I do not have the time to answer them. Nor am I the Housing Minister, so I do not have the expertise. We shall write to her, however, to give her the full answers she deserves and copy in all hon. Members who have spoken today, but I fear that I will not be able to answer her questions fully right now.

The debate is a fascinating and challenging one. Of course no one in this House, on either side, denies that not just in London but most acutely in London this country faces a housing crisis. It is a subject to which I have given a great deal of attention and energy in the short time that I have been Planning Minister. It is important to understand that houses take a while to build. In our planning system, they take even longer to secure consent for. It is therefore not unfair to say that the seeds of most of what is happening now were laid several years ago.

The one thing that I missed in the excellent speeches of all the Opposition Members was any sense of responsibility for the situation we find ourselves in, or any sense of recognition that the seeds of the current crisis were sown not after May 2010 but decades ago, and they certainly have not been changed since.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Slaughter]

indicated dissent.

[Emily Thornberry]

indicated dissent.

[Nick Boles]

Opposition Members protest from a sedentary position, but they need to ask themselves why most of them here today, who were part of the previous Government as Ministers or were elected under that Government, did not persuade their Government to introduce rent controls. I think there is a good reason why they did not persuade their Government to do so: it is unclear from the evidence that rent controls or even rent stabilisation, the arguments in favour of which we all understand, will make happen what we know needs to happen, which is to increase the number of new housing units.

If we say to investors who are going to build houses for rent that the amount they can put up rent by is going to be controlled, their ability to compete with other investors who are going to build houses for sale, which are, after all, a large proportion of the market, will be restricted. Their ability to bid at the same prices as people who are going to build flats for sale will be reduced. Then we would have to start controlling the ability of people who were going to build houses for sale to enable competition with people who would not be able to put rents up.