Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill

Debate between Richard Fuller and David Anderson

Wednesday 17th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Richard Fuller]

The hon. Gentleman, too, makes a good point. I have read the evidence given to the Public Bill Committee, and it was not sufficiently evidentiary to move Mr Beecroft’s point forward. However, the hon. Gentleman will know that developed economies are currently having trouble with how to increase employment as they come out of recession. In the United States and the United Kingdom, it is taking us longer to create jobs as the economy recovers. It is therefore imperative that we look at the evidence, to see whether we wish to promote the Beecroft proposals. That is why we need a deeper and more serious debate than just talking about poor evidence in a Public Bill Committee or anecdotal evidence somewhere else, and one without name-calling.

[Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman makes the exact point that we constantly made in the Public Bill Committee. Given what he is saying, surely we should stop this debate and then take a view one way or another when we have got the evidence. At the moment, everything that the Government are doing is based on views that are not evidence-based.

Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill

Debate between Richard Fuller and David Anderson

Monday 11th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)]

As our national economy searches for growth, we look for direction. As our small businesses, our shopkeepers and our entrepreneurs struggle with unyielding burdens, they look for relief. As many who are unemployed, both short-term and long-term, continue their search for employment, they ask for hope. And so we turn for inspiration to the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill. Here was our chance to send a clear message that we were going to roll back the European regulation that is calcifying the spirit of enterprise. Here was the opportunity to come forward with new ideas and initiatives for new funding sources to assist in dealing with the gap in funding for our small businesses. Here was an opportunity to press for changes in the jobs tax and to look for more tax deductions for people who wish to put their capital at risk in our small businesses. Here was an opportunity indeed to send a clear message to our local bureaucrats, with their pettifogging rules and regulations which are causing more misery to shopkeepers in our town centres, that they should stand back a bit and understand how hard it is in many town centres for small businesses to make progress. This Bill was the opportunity to address all those things, and I look forward to hearing in Committee how we have done on all of them.

I wish to address one part of the Bill, and it relates to what has been termed “hire and fire” and what has been termed “compensated no-fault dismissals”. I do this because I do not feel that Adrian Beecroft’s proposals have been given due consideration. There are strong arguments on both sides as to whether or not we should implement them, but we have not investigated the issues sufficiently carefully and it is wrong to dismiss the proposals with ridicule, with abuse or with fearmongering. Let me explain why that is.

If we look at the issues in developed economies, particularly those of the United Kingdom and the United States, relating to how we recover from recessions, we discover that our economies are finding it tougher to create jobs as we recover. In the period before the 1990s, it took on average about six months from the economy recovering for it to reach full employment. Since the 1990s, the figure has gone from an average of six months’ further delay to one of 15 months or more. The United States is a much better economy at recovering from recessions than the United Kingdom is. In the US, it takes on average four to five years for the economy to bounce back, but in the UK it takes eight to 10 years. There are therefore two strong reasons for examining why the UK is not as good at recovering employment as other countries are and why, even in those countries, it is becoming more difficult to associate growth with employment.

[Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)]

Interestingly, the OECD has the UK as the second worst country out of 36 in the developed world for employment rights—only the US is worse—yet the record shows that countries such as Germany, with much better employment rights, have come out of recession faster. Is that not the lesson we should be learning tonight?

[Richard Fuller]

I appreciate the intervention, but I am not as clear as the hon. Gentleman is about those particular statistics and I am not sure that they paint the correct picture for the United Kingdom. The shadow Secretary of State cited the World Bank earlier when he looked at the overall statistics on doing business and said that they had—surprisingly—got better under the previous Government. If we look at the same World Bank statistics and the issues to do with the labour markets, we find that this country declined from 17th to 34th position in the period from 2007 to 2010. In terms of the need for change in the labour markets, it has been shown that we need to get a little better.

Postal Services Bill

Debate between Richard Fuller and David Anderson

Wednesday 12th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Anderson]

We may compare the IBA to a sticking plaster covering a wound, but if it continues following privatisation, it will provide that little bit of additional protection that would not be there otherwise. Otherwise, post offices will be left wide open to businesses that simply want to make money. Why else would they want to take on post offices? Who wants this not to happen? The people who want it not to happen are those who want to buy postal services, who want to compete, and who want to make more and more money.

If we had been sitting here 25 years ago, we would have been debating the privatisation of the utilities. We would have heard all the arguments that we have heard today about how dynamic privatisation is, and about the efficiencies that it produces. E.ON is raising prices by 9% at a time when people are facing pay freezes. That is the truth about privatisation, and that is what will happen in the case of this privatisation.

[Richard Fuller]

I should like some clarification. We are using the phrase “inter-business agreement”, but the hon. Gentleman seems to be describing it as a 10-year continuing subsidy mechanism. Is he saying that he wants an inter-business agreement to be the transport mechanism for a continuing taxpayer subsidy, regardless of whether Royal Mail is privatised?

[Mr Anderson]

I want the IBA to give sub-postmasters the security that they have asked for. They say that it will give them faith in their ability to continue in their business. After all, it is their money. As I said earlier, they will lose £2 billion if the Bill does not work. They would much rather remain in a system enabling post offices to remain in operation and to receive support from the public purse. If we had adopted that attitude, we would not be having this debate.

[Richard Fuller]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way to me again. There is an issue here that specifically concerns subsidy, and we should call it subsidy rather than an inter-business agreement.

The hon. Gentleman has cited the comments of Royal Mail executives as well as those of members of the National Federation of SubPostmasters. They did not ask for a 10-year IBA. Was that because the changes proposed in the Bill will enable managers to manage the operations of the business? Is not one of the problems that we have experienced in the past the fact that Government have shackled management and prevented it from managing effectively? That is the reason for the programme of closures and the inability to modernise effectively.

[Mr Anderson]

That is true, but the managers have not made the best of the deal that they have been given. They have received plenty of public money, but they have not succeeded. There are a number of reasons for that, but in recent months we have seen a break from it. We have seen new management; we have also seen the trade unions presenting a modernisation plan that can and will work. Those developments are being stopped in their tracks by the attitude of the Government, who want privatisation at all costs.