Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill
Debate between Sandra Osborne and Richard Fuller
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.
Richard Fuller
Very briefly; I, like others, will not then use up more time.
Sandra Osborne
Statistics are extremely interesting, but what is the connection between what the hon. Gentleman is talking about and no-fault dismissal? Where is the evidence for that?
Richard Fuller
Many people look at the “dismissal” part of no-fault dismissal, whereas for Government Members and some Opposition Members the other part is how willing employers are to take someone on when they understand what the risks may be of having to hold on to them. That is the connection. My focus is not on the fear of what might happen in firing situations, which has rightly been expressed by Opposition Members, but on dead-weight costs and the number of people who have not been hired because employers are not prepared to take the risk with their businesses. All hon. Members and all businesses are concerned about achieving growth. To achieve growth, businesses need certainty, but equally they need to have certainty that any additional staff they hire will work out well. For a small business of three, four, five or 10 employees, hiring one person is an incredibly big decision. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Margot James) said about a business in her constituency, such costs have a significant impact on cash flow and perhaps viability.
For those reasons, I hope that in Committee we can look again at the issues that Adrian Beecroft has raised, although I think the Secretary of State has dismissed them. I hope we do so by saying, “We aren’t yet sure what the right answer is, but we are not going to be put off by scaremongering tactics.” We need to understand whether such proposals will have an impact.
Those are the main issues. If we are to achieve growth in our country’s economy, it must be founded on a better approach to getting people back to work quickly. We do not have the answers from our recovery from recessions of the recent past. I believe that making it easier for people to understand the risk involved when they hire people will be a major step forward in that regard.