Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill

Debate between William Bain and Stephen Metcalfe

Wednesday 16th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr William Bain (Glasgow North East) (Lab)]

Small business needs a Bill that unlocks new finance to help businesses grow, gives new impetus to business investment, boosts science and research, and provides fairness and clarity on rights at work, while removing the worst abuses of zero-hours contracts. Sadly, judging by the Bill before the House today, the real radicalism of this Government is expended on the frenzy of briefing against each other, rather than on dealing with the underlying problems that affect the sustainability of the recovery and small businesses: a serious skills shortage, a growing trade deficit, still modest business investment, stagnant productivity threatening permanently lower living standards, short-termism on infrastructure, and chronic insecurity at work.

The Bill falls short on the challenge of putting optimism back into business in Britain for several key reasons. First, it fails to address the crisis of young people, work and skills identified by the OECD in its study last autumn. Small businesses are struggling to find employees with the required skills in our weakened labour market. In the production sector alone, 25% find the availability of workers with non-management skills worse than the year before. A third of small firms say skill shortages are stifling growth. When four out of five manufacturers in this country say that they are finding it difficult to find employees with the right skill set, and two thirds of those go on to say that that is because of a lack of technical skills, we in this House should listen.

[Stephen Metcalfe]

Does the hon. Gentleman not accept that the skills shortage cannot possibly have happened in the past four years alone? There must have been a deficit going back to the previous Government for there not to be any skilled employees around now.

[Mr Bain]

That is an interesting point, but to answer it I advise the hon. Gentleman to listen to what businesses are actually saying, which is that the problem is getting worse on this Government’s watch. What are the Government doing to deal with it and what will the Bill do to deal with it? Precious little.

The Government should be doing more to support small businesses to improve the technical skills of their staff. They should be looking at the idea the Opposition proposed to introduce technical degrees, which would give hundreds of thousands of people the opportunity to get the degree-level skills that small businesses are looking for while they are still in work.

Secondly, the Bill fails the test of promoting small businesses because of a lack of any substantial measures to improve access to finance. The £1.5 billion direct lending scheme, launched by the Government in autumn 2013, received only 15 inquiries by April 2014; just one firm applied for support under a scheme first announced in the previous year’s autumn statement. The £5 billion export refinancing scheme was launched in July 2012 as part of the Treasury’s UK guarantees scheme. As of April this year, not a single business has been helped by that scheme. As welcome as clause 4 is on the sharing of data on small and medium-sized businesses between challenger banks, the Bill does nothing to create additional competition in the banking system to repair broken financial pipelines that would mean that corporate surpluses can find a home in productive investment in our economy. Just one third of SMEs are using external finance and only a third of applications for first-time loans are being accepted.

Thirdly, on access to broadband, the Bill fails to remove some of the practical barriers many firms suffer from, particularly in remote areas, and fails to promote competition in ways recommended by the recent report on broadband by the Federation of Small Businesses.

Fourthly, on zero-hours contracts, as many as 1.4 million people, plus those who work in agencies, will still have insecure working hours despite the provisions in the Bill. There is no commitment that people who have been consistently employed for a year or more will receive guaranteed hours at work. I recently met a constituent in Blackhill in my constituency who has worked for 15 months with the same employer. He can see his weekly hours fluctuate from zero to as many as 74 hours via text and with minimal notice. The provisions in this Bill will not help him. They are weak and easy to evade.

Some of the faces on the Treasury Bench may be different, but it appears that the mindset of this Government remains closed to new ideas. There may be new voices at the Dispatch Box, but on policy this is a no-change Government, dominated by the same old Tories. For a lasting recovery that will genuinely benefit ordinary people and small businesses alike, next May’s general election and a Labour Government cannot come soon enough.