Post Office: GLO Compensation Scheme

Debate between Nigel Evans and Darren Jones

Wednesday 7th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I call the Chair of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee.

[Darren Jones (Bristol North West) (Lab)]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Take two: I call Darren Jones.

[Darren Jones]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker.

I welcome the announcements made today, which were recommended in my Committee’s interim report on compensation and by many others, and I welcome the appointments of my right hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) and Lord Arbuthnot in the other place. In respect of the benefit disregards, can the Secretary of state confirm when the statutory instrument will be tabled? It will not take long to do, and it should be done quickly. Can he also confirm that while we are waiting for the benefit disregards to come into force, the victims who suffer loss as a consequence of that will be given additional compensation to cover the deductions from their benefits and pension payments?

Corporate Insolvency and Governance Bill

Debate between Nigel Evans and Darren Jones

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Wednesday 3rd June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Darren Jones]

I do not. The public health emergency had to be dealt with, and understandably, it had consequences for the economic emergency we find ourselves in. Retail was one example that we heard from. However, I declare my constituency interests in the aerospace sector and in the transport sector, where evidently there will be a longer tail of damage to their business prospects than to other sectors of the economy that might be able to open sooner rather than later.

That is why we need a comprehensive recovery and growth plan, which, I understand from the Prime Minister at the Liaison Committee hearing last week, will be with us before the summer recess. That plan will need to take a strategic view on what the British economy should look like in the future, and what capacity, skills and production we therefore need to protect now—with, of course, the net zero transition baked in.

On corporate governance, which the Secretary of State noted today has been part of the longer-term thinking of this Government, I worry that the Government’s determination to act quickly in the Bill has come at the cost of bringing forward long-awaited reforms, as was so eloquently posited by the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly). The failings that led to the collapses of Carillion and Thomas Cook, for example, and the impact of those failings on their employees, suppliers and customers, as well as the taxpayer, were the subject of extensive work by the BEIS Committee under the leadership of my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves), and that work underpinned serious reform-minded proposals to protect employees and the smaller suppliers, which too often suffer most.

In response to the Government’s 2018 consultation, Ministers also made repeated commitments to strengthen governance before the point of insolvency, for instance by better incentivising shareholders to take responsibility for performance.

I do not wish to set a panacea standard for the Bill, which I of course recognise needed to come forward quickly, but there was a welcome opportunity for the Government to have a bit more to show to bear out its claims of seriousness on this issue. With that in mind, I am curious to hear what commitments Ministers can make today to ensuring that the anticipated legislation on “Good Work”, following the Taylor report, and parallel legislation to reform the Financial Reporting Council into the Audit, Reporting and Governance Authority, are introduced to the House as soon as possible.

Relatedly, the BEIS Committee’s work in the last Parliament on curbing runaway executive pay and requiring proper reporting of the gender pay gap, alongside the question of how investment decisions on behalf of British savers and pensioners should be made in such a way as to bring society-wide benefits, in line with the stewardship code, constitute a challenge which I hope Ministers will rise to, if not in the Bill, then in the short future.

I understand the Government’s hesitation to reinvent the wheel with this specific piece of legislation, but I would welcome a clear statement of intent from Ministers today on the importance of rigorous corporate reporting—including on executive pay and the gender pay gap—and the centrality of building environmental, social and governance principles into investment decisions. I agree with other hon. Members that there have been many businesses acting in the best possible good faith in very difficult circumstances, but all of us recognise, as has been debated in the House today, that some businesses might be pushing that good faith too far, and where businesses are acting in bad faith, especially when in receipt of British taxpayers’ money, there ought to be at least consequences for the worst examples.

I appreciate the Government’s determination to act quickly, but moments of crisis should broaden, not constrain, our ambition to create a better future. The Bill will come as a genuine relief to businesses in the most difficult shape, and I of course support it. But its caution should be a matter of regret, and any such continued caution could yet be the undoing of the Government’s recovery efforts in the long term. In that spirit, I gently urge Ministers to be bold as well as decisive—so that the Bill forms the start, not the end. I look forward to further discussions on this topic before our Committee.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I call Chris Clarkson to make his maiden speech.