Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill

Debate between Toby Perkins and Anna Soubry

Tuesday 18th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Toby Perkins]

I am in the rather unusual position of speaking to my new clauses and in effect winding up the debate at the same time, but it is a challenge I relish.

There have been some very valuable contributions to the debate. I reiterate my admiration of the campaign on late payments led my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams). She has been a really doughty fighter on the issue, and there is no doubt that late payment is a key factor in holding back small business growth. Suppliers frequently report that it is one of the key hurdles that they face, alongside access to finance, because small businesses do not have the cash flow buffers of their large competitors.

The hon. Member for Ipswich (Ben Gummer) has been forced to leave his place—he arrived in rather a rush and left in rather a rush. Let us hope he is properly dressed when he returns. He said, rather ungenerously, that I was in a lonely position as a Labour Member in having run a small business. However, we all know that my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray) was a small business owner, as were my hon. Friends the Members for Ochil and South Perthshire (Gordon Banks) and for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson) and many of my other colleagues. And so are several of Labour’s parliamentary candidates, who we hope will be joining us here in just a few months. Conservative Members often try to create the impression that they are the only ones who have ever been in business and that all Labour Members were previously engaged in social work, school teaching or whatever they think is not worthy.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Anna Soubry)]

Nothing wrong with that.

[Toby Perkins]

Absolutely right, there is nothing wrong with that. However, the suggestion that none of my colleagues has been involved in the business world does not stand up to scrutiny

The hon. Member for Ipswich described the Bill as a thing of “magnitude”, which was an incredibly generous description. It contains a number of measures, none of which has anything particularly wrong with it, but it is not in any sense a thing of magnitude. It contains small steps in the right direction on transparency, with some positive commitments from the Government— [Interruption.] Oh, he’s back. I’ve just been talking about you. For the benefit of anyone watching on television, the hon. Member for Ipswich has returned. There are positive steps in the Bill on the role that central Government will play by paying people on time, but it is certainly not a thing of magnitude. The steps are relatively minor, and the steps that the Opposition proposed in Committee and have alluded to today on Report would have been far more significant, which was why they enjoyed such broad support.

The hon. Gentleman attempted to say, “The Federation of Small Businesses—what do they know? They might be wrong.” I believe that having more transparency would be a significant step, so he was wrong to say that. Many owners of the 2,500 businesses a year that go bust as a result of not being paid on time will think so, too. It is important to get on record the full scale of the problem that we are highlighting, and to reiterate some of the statistics that my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth gave. Figures published by Bacs reveal that Britain’s small businesses now carry a burden of £39.4 billion in overdue payment.

East Midlands Ambulance Service

Debate between Toby Perkins and Anna Soubry

Monday 21st January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Anna Soubry]

No, the Minister is not saying that she is going to get rid of them; what I am saying is that I take the view—as the hon. Gentleman does—that targets are not particularly improving services. I think there is a case for re-examining targets, and I hope he would join me in saying to the ambulance service, “Let’s look again at these targets in the NHS to see whether they’re doing the job we want them to do,” because it is precisely because of these targets that elderly people in my constituency have been lying on floors for up to four hours while ambulances have to go to meet a target.

[Toby Perkins]

The hon. Lady seems to be saying that the ambulance service is so focused on targets that it is incapable of recognising that leaving an old lady lying on the floor for four hours is reprehensible and appalling. She is letting the ambulance service off tremendously lightly to suggest that that is reasonable.

[Anna Soubry]

I am not saying that it is reasonable at all. What I am saying is that this was the system introduced under the last Labour Administration— a Government whom the hon. Gentleman supported. These are the precise consequences of that system; it is the perversion of that system that has led us to a situation in which targets have to be hit. I can assure hon. Members that I explored this matter with Mr Milligan, and an elderly lady lying on the floor with a suspected fractured hip does not fall into the category of an emergency life-threatening situation. These are not definitions imposed by this Government; these are the consequences of the 13 years of the previous Administration. I take the view that the situation needs urgent review, and I will certainly be making that recommendation in the Department that we need to look again at the ambulance service.

Living Standards

Debate between Toby Perkins and Anna Soubry

Wednesday 30th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Anna Soubry]

I am more than happy to give way in a moment to the hon. Lady whose constituency is next to mine in Nottingham.

What people do not do—they recognise this if they are responsible—is to borrow more. If they have reached the maximum on their credit card or their overdraft, they must pull in their horns, live within their means, and cut their expenditure to match their income. Opposition Members struggle with that concept, because they never practised it when in government. That is why we have an appalling level of debt and, worst of all, an appalling level of deficit.

[Toby Perkins]

The first thing the hon. Lady seems to be suggesting is that the national debt is a brand new concept. The country has always had a national debt. The reality is that until 2008, her party supported our spending plans. The national debt fell between 1997 and 2007 under the Labour Government. She is talking as though the issue is brand new, but the reality is that a global economic crisis caused the scale of the deficit, and she must take that into account.