Entrepreneurs from Ethnic Minority Backgrounds

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Tuesday 20th December 2022 Westminster Hall

[Sir Stephen Timms]

I very much agree with the hon. Member. That point is made in the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry report, and she is right to highlight it.

Over half of black business owners say that they have seen banks taking action to deal with the problem, but only 12% think that that action taken is significant. Minority-led businesses also account for very little venture capital investment, less than 2% of which went to all-ethnic founder teams in 2019, according to the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Black African firms are four times more likely than white firms to be refused a loan, according to the British Business Bank. Mainstream services do not seem to be working for ethnic minorities. Ethnic minority groups have less wealth than their white counterparts, and there is a strong correlation between that and business success. They have fewer savings, so they are more reliant on external financial support.

Given that, it is no surprise that minority-led businesses do less well. According to London Chamber of Commerce and Industry research, 38% of Asian and other minority business owners and 28% of black business owners reported making no profit, compared with 16% of white business owners. Thirty-nine per cent. of black entrepreneurs and nearly half of Asian and other ethnic minority entrepreneurs stopped working on their business idea because of “difficulties getting finance”, compared with a much smaller proportion—just a quarter—of white entrepreneurs.

We need to be doing better than this, for the sake of not just business owners but the wider prosperity of our society. I welcome the Labour party review of start-up funding, led by Lord O’Neill, who was a Treasury Minister in the coalition Government. The review will consider how to ensure that ethnic minority entrepreneurs can access the finance, support and networks they need. Newham-based Shpresa is a community organisation supporting self-help among London’s Albanian community. It was founded and led by the remarkable Luljeta Nuzi, a social entrepreneur I first met when she came to the UK seeking asylum from Kosovo. She went on to graduate from the School for Social Entrepreneurs, and when today’s debate was announced, she drew my attention to the school’s match trading initiative, which provides enterprise grant finance, supported by Lloyds bank; the aim is that racially minoritised social enterprises should be early adopters.

When the Minister responds, can she give us the Government’s assessment of the lending practices of financial institutions to ethnic minority businesses, and say whether she sees real progress being made? It is welcome that between 2012 and 2018, over 11,000 ethnic minority entrepreneurs received Government-backed start-up loans. The additional action that is needed is largely for the financial services industry, but there is one area where Government action is particularly needed: public procurement. A big section of the report by the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry is devoted to this area, and it calls for a Government taskforce to work on increasing public procurement from ethnic minority businesses.

The LCCI wants the Government to move beyond merely “best endeavours” to introducing, for example, minimum target percentages for procurement from minority-owned businesses, in order to simplify procurement procedures and increase public purchasing from micro-businesses. It also wants tenders to be scored, in bid assessments, on supply chain diversity, and the Government to establish prestigious awards to highlight the achievements of minority-owned businesses.

In the LCCI’s report, a quote caught my eye from Demi Ariyo, founder of a funding platform:

“It became clear to me that there was a problem to be solved upon witnessing my church’s experience and hearing the first-hand experience of other minority ethnic entrepreneurs who had tried to seek funding.”

As the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on faith and society, I would like there to be greater support for entrepreneurship among people who are coming together in faith groups. Britain’s history is replete with great businesses that have their roots in religious faith. Let us have more of them, and newer ones.

My second point is about the lack of reliable data on ethnic diversity in business, which the report describes as “a recurring theme”. Here again, we need action by Government and by business. Companies House does not record the ethnicity of company directors. There is no legal requirement for businesses to publish their ethnicity pay gap, although they are rightly obliged to publish their gender pay gap. In 2017, the then Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), promised to ask large employers to publish their ethnicity pay gap data. It has not happened yet. Can the Minister tell us whether that 2017 commitment still stands, and if so, when it will be implemented?

The paucity of data means that there is a lot that we just do not know. Without detailed and reliable data on ethnic minority entrepreneurship, we cannot fully understand the barriers that exist, as we must if we are to remove them. In this recession, the gap between ethnic minorities and others in business may well get worse. We need to grip this issue now, so that trends can be monitored and support appropriately targeted. We cannot meet the needs of minority-led businesses without having adequate information about their characteristics and their performance.

In the LCCI report, Dr Tony Matharu, chair of the LCCI’s Asian Business Association, and Lord Michael Hastings, chair of its Black Business Association, call for financial institutions to collect data about their support for ethnic minority businesses, as they do for women-led businesses under the Investing in Women code.

The two issues that I have highlighted are part of a much bigger set of challenges. When the Minister responds, can she assure us that the Government recognise the need, spelled out by the LCCI, for strategic engagement between the business community, Government and ethnic minority entrepreneurs?

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

I support the right hon. Gentleman’s efforts on faith and society. As one of the officers of the all-party parliamentary group on black and minority ethnic business owners, I am supported by Diana Chrouch. I direct hon. Members’ attention to an article in The Sunday Times of 14 February 2021, by Oliver Shah, talking to Wol Kolade, who has the initiative 10,000 Black Interns. He talks about unkinking the pipeline of black talent. It seems to me that letting people get through and do what they are capable of is what we should be aiming for.

[Sir Stephen Timms]

I completely agree with the Father of the House. I had not seen that article, but it sounds to me as though it makes exactly the case that needs to be made.

I wonder whether the Minister will commit to better engagement between the groups I mentioned, in order to boost diversity in business. Bridging this large and persistent ethnic diversity gap is not straightforward. Realising the potential to which the Father of House has rightly drawn our attention is a long-term challenge. We need to be determined to end racial and ethnic inequality across UK society, including when it comes to start-up support, and to closing gaps that have persisted for far too long.

I hope that the Minister can reassure us that the Government recognise the importance of the issue, and will set out plans to make sure that we can all benefit from the skills and contributions of all those who want to set up in business but are too often excluded by unfair and unnecessary barriers.

Recall of Tumble Dryers

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Monday 17th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Kelly Tolhurst]

The hon. Lady raises an important point on how we reach consumers, and part of the review covered the adequacy of the outreach programme. Our review found that Whirlpool needs to do more in that space, which is exactly why we issued a notice for Whirlpool to tell us what it will do further on the intention to recall. Whirlpool had time to respond, and we asked for further information on how it will get that information out to consumers. That will be a key part of how we review anything that Whirlpool submits to us, and the process will be ongoing if the recall notice is served or if Whirlpool decides to undertake a recall itself.

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

We ought to recognise that Whirlpool took over Indesit Hotpoint in 2014. It identified the problem in 2015 and has been trying to take action, but not fully adequately.

Will the Minister ask Whirlpool to make sure that the website better identifies the EU product safety site, as with Creda, Proline or Swan? Will she also ask the search engines, especially Google, to feature product recall information on the first search page, preferably even before the advertisements? Finally, will she indicate that safe products have a green dot inside the door? If people want to know the serial number and model, that is also inside the door.

[Kelly Tolhurst]

I thank my hon. Friend. As he requests, I will ask Whirlpool how it can make its website more user-friendly. I cannot give him any guarantees on Google’s actions, but I am sure that is something we can take forward. He has previously raised his final point in the House, and consumers will therefore have heard him. I reiterate that, if consumers are concerned about the products in their home, they can go on the website and call the Whirlpool helpline. If their tumble dryer has been modified, continued use is a low risk. We recommend that unmodified dryers are unplugged and not used and that Whirlpool is contacted.

Consumer Protection

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Tuesday 11th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

I welcome the way in which the Minister has put this to the House. I would be interested in the responses to the questions raised by the hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Gill Furniss), the Opposition Front-Bench spokesperson.

I have had two serious interests in consumer protection, which may or may not be partially affected by this regulation. The first was in residential leasehold, when Tchenguiz interests—although I am not terribly concerned about which they were—forced large numbers of lease- holders to change their call systems. There were rigged bids for replacing them, and when eventually the authorities began to take account of what was happening, the subsidiary Cirrus, which did nearly all the work, having won nearly all the bids, reported itself, saying that it was involved in a cartel. The others were minnows. The others got punished, and the Tchenguiz interests, through Peverel and Cirrus, got off scot-free.

I would like to know from the Minister, perhaps in writing after this debate, whether that is the kind of thing that could be picked up by these regulations, if reported by, for example, the campaigning charity Leasehold Knowledge Partnership, or whether there is some other way in which the Serious Fraud Office, trading standards and others could come in and protect these people. There are no current legal proceedings, so there is no particular problem, and the Minister may want to get her Department to consult other Departments about what they were doing when they were first alerted to these problems.

Secondly, I advise the Government to try to make sure that all those involved take account of the serious issues that are justified, but do not spend too much time chasing ones that are not. Many years ago, when I was Minister for roads, painting white lines down the middle of our national highways—quite a dangerous position to be in—our Consumers Association, Which?, followed up something from the Consumer Union in the United States, which wrongly took against a small four-wheel-drive car called the Suzuki Jimny or Samurai or 410; the suggestion was that it was the most dangerous vehicle on the roads, which should be banned. It was clearly not more dangerous than motor cycles. It turned out that it was not even the most dangerous in terms of stability. Nevertheless, for a year I had to fight off those who were arguing for a ban.

The point of telling this story to the Minister is that I hope the Government will take some account of science, that they will take some account of whether complaints are justified, and that where complaints are justified and consumers are at risk they will take action, but where they are not they will pass the matter back and say, “Try again some other time. We are interested in what works—is it necessary, is it right and will it work?”

British Steel

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Colleagues, I will shortly come to Members with constituency interests, and indeed to the hon. Member for Watford (Richard Harrington), the former Minister, but I would like to begin with a new, young Member who once worked for British Steel. I call Sir Peter Bottomley.

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

That was quite some time ago, Mr Speaker, when it was the British Steel Corporation rather than the old Appleby-Frodingham steel plant that we are discussing today.

I put it to my right hon. Friend that we ought to go on following his non-partisan line, but we ought also to remember what happened to steel production and steel employment during the last Government. Will he also tell us what can be done on energy costs, which form a large part of steel production costs?

Can my right hon. Friend confirm that this is an industry in which the worldwide steel cycle has a massive impact? The House will be grateful to him for doing all that he can to mitigate its effects on this country.

[Greg Clark]

I agree with my hon. Friend. I was unaware that he had had that early experience in the steel sector. I do not want to make a partisan point, so perhaps I can take this in a historical sense to illustrate that the steel sector has been through periods of turbulence and difficulty in this country and around the world, and it is clearly going through one now. It was the case that steel production fell by 50% between 1997 and 2010, as did employment in the sector, but I do not blame that on the Government of the day. It was a feature of the market at the time, but I think that we should learn the lessons from some of the decisions that were taken then. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Middlesbrough reminds us from a sedentary position that the blast furnaces at Redcar were mothballed, which made it difficult to return them to service. They did come back with SSI, but it was very difficult to do that. The point is that we should have the maximum possible continuity, and attend to the lessons from that time. Criticisms were made at the time of the approach being taken both there and in SSI, and in the present situation we should learn the lessons and ensure that we have maximum continuity.

Tuition Fees

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Wednesday 19th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

The House will know that I was not here for most of the debate, but I would like to join the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mike Hill) and send best wishes from this side of the House to Rodney Bickerstaffe, who I knew in my various roles. I congratulate the hon. Gentleman and his supporters on doubling the majority of his predecessor. The House will look forward to many more contributions from him. The less controversial ones will be welcomed, including his commitment to investment—private and public—in his constituency, and the more controversial ones may get a riposte later on.

The hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan) comes to this House as one of the best qualified people to contribute to our debates for all the reasons he mentioned in his speech. He is the sort of person who will give Parliament a good reputation. I hope he and we can co-operate, working across the House to achieve many of the things to which he is committed. I congratulate both hon. Gentlemen on their maiden speeches.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Legislative Grand Committee: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Monday 21st November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Joseph Johnson]

The key terms and conditions are set out in legislation—it is the law that binds us—and are subject to the scrutiny and oversight of Parliament. FCA regulation is therefore unnecessary, as students are already protected. Our system allows the Government, through these subsidised loans, to make a conscious investment in the skills base of our country. I should have thought that Labour Members would welcome that.

New clause 5 would revoke the 2015 student support regulations. These regulations replaced maintenance grants with loans, which increased support for students on the lowest incomes by over 10%. Revoking these regulations would reduce the support available for students from some of the most disadvantaged backgrounds, while costing the taxpayer over £2.5 billion per year. Opposition scaremongering about this policy risks deterring students from attending university. The sustainable system that we have put in place has enabled us to remove the cap on student numbers and offer more support for living costs than ever before.

New clauses 6 and 10 would require the repayment threshold for all income-contingent student loans to increase in line with either earnings or prices. Loan repayments continue to be based on the ability to pay, and graduates earning less than £21,000 were not affected by the threshold freeze. Those who benefit from a university education are likely to go on to earn more than taxpayers who do not go to university, so it is only fair that graduates should contribute to the cost of their education. Uprating the repayment threshold for all income-contingent student loans, as new clause 6 proposes, would cost about £5 billion in the first year due to a reduction in the value of the loan book. Thereafter, it would increase the resource account and budgeting charge by about 7%.

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

Is that £5 billion a capital estimate of the value of the loan book or is it the annual running cost?

[Joseph Johnson]

That represents a decrease in the capital value of the loan book.

The cost of uprating by the consumer prices index, as new clause 10 proposes, would be less, but still significant. These costs would need to be paid for by taxpayers, many of whom will be earning less than the graduates who would benefit from the threshold increase.

New clause 10 relates to access to support for students recognised as needing protection. This is an important issue which was raised by the hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) in Committee, and is already addressed, as we have discussed, within the student support regulations. I am pleased to say that those who come to this country and obtain international protection are already able to access student support. Our regulations have for some time included provision for those granted refugee status or humanitarian protection, and their family members.

Those persons entering the UK under the Syrian vulnerable persons relocation scheme, and granted humanitarian protection, will be eligible, like UK nationals, to obtain student support and home-fee status after only three years’ residence in the UK. Persons on the programme are not precluded from applying for refugee status if they consider that they meet the criteria. Those with refugee status are uniquely allowed to access student support immediately, a privilege not afforded to UK nationals or those granted other forms of leave. There is a distinction in international law between such status and that of those in need of humanitarian protection.

Recently the Supreme Court upheld the Government’s policy of requiring most persons, including UK citizens, to be ordinarily lawfully resident in the UK for at least three years immediately prior to starting their course in order to be eligible for student support. The amendment would allow people who may subsequently be required to leave the country to access taxpayer funding for their study.

The last group of amendments includes some technical Government amendments relating to alternative student finance. Unless hon. Members show an interest in them, I will move on to my conclusion.

This Government are committed to a sustainable and fair student funding system. We are seeing more people going to university than ever before, and record numbers of students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Our funding system has enabled us to lift the cap on student numbers and, with it, the cap on aspiration that it represented. I hope the Opposition can see that if their amendments were not pressed, the student funding regime would remain sustainable, working in the best interests of students and taxpayers.