Sir John Hayes
MP for South Holland and The Deepings · Conservative · United Kingdom
“On the subject of keeping land habitable, the hon. Lady will be familiar with the fact that the Lincolnshire fens, and particularly South Holland and The Deepings, are entirely flat, without even the undulation equivalent to the Mendip hills.”
“They have shown by their example that carelessness, and only when they have been prevented from doing harm have they ceased to do so. I am delighted that the Government are now taking steps to prevent children from accessing social media and mobile telephones; I would like to go much further, actually, and I hope the Government will.”
“What has occurred is the distortion of public discourse, the enabling of widespread fraud and the provision of the means for every imaginable form of harm, from hardcore pornography being available to children, to internet gambling addiction, suicide sites and much more. Now, the prospect of AI will make all that still more chilling.”
“I absolutely agree. That is why I began by describing what has occurred over the last quarter of a century and the misunderstanding—a pervasive one that affected all political parties and Governments of all kinds—that a dangerous fascination with novelty was more important than the certainty that I have just outlined. The hon.”
“Gentleman is right, and of course it is true that there will be the advantages that he describes, particularly in the research field. My fear is that they will obscure, in the eyes of those who have the power to make a difference, the points that the hon. Member for Poole made.”
“I know from my dealings with the hon. Gentleman that he is a good and effective Member of Parliament who takes a very responsible view of these things, but we must not let the virtues that he describes blind us to the vices. That is what happened with the internet.”
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“My hon. Friend is right about the cost of benefits, but he is also right to suggest that they need to be directed to those in the greatest need—the most deserving. That is what we all want across this House. Sadly, because of family breakdown and the fragmentation of communities, the state has stepped in to do what was once done, in my early life, by families, individuals and communities. It is really important that this welfare reform is seen in that broader context, and that we direct the money to those with the greatest need.”
“There are two fundamental macroeconomic problems facing this country. One is productivity, and the second is mass immigration, which has displaced investment in domestic skills. The Budget did nothing about those, and yet the tax system could be used to address both.”
“Will she answer this very straightforward question: what evidence does she have that hostile states and organised criminals are using this as a route to get people to this country to do still more harm?”
“This is about principle and practice. The principle is that every country has the right and indeed the duty to secure its borders, and in practice ours have become porous. I agree with the Home Secretary that global instability continues to drive illegal migration, I agree with her that we need co-operation upstream and I agree with her that previous Governments have done far too little, but the scale of the problem requires more than she is offering today. The trend is up. If it continues, 85,000 people will cross, each one knowing that they are coming here illegally. This requires much more emphatic action. Everyone who comes should be incarcerated and all those who can be returned should be. We must recognise that the asylum system is being gamed on an industrial scale.”
“I ask the Secretary of State this: will he ensure that this unhappy, unwholesome and unhealthy action does not jeopardise the health of my constituents, and will he write to the local authorities—the integrated care boards—in my area and others to set out how they can minimise the impact of this action? The last thing that you want, Madam Deputy Speaker, or that I or any Member across this House wants, is for those at risk to be put at greater risk as a result of this irresponsible action by these militant people.”
“I have known the Secretary of State a long time. I knew him before he was an important man—although he was always important to me, of course. He will know that as a Minister, I worked with the trade unions in every sector for which I was responsible, as the RMT and the University and College Union will confirm, and I was also a member of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers. I entirely endorse and amplify what he says. Responsible trade unionism requires people to be reasonable, and reasonable people in this House know that this strike against this background is entirely unacceptable, as he has described.”
“I am immensely grateful to the Chair of the Education Committee for the way she has introduced the report and the work she has done. I am particularly moved by what she said about disabled people, and I wonder if she would look at the relationship between that and special needs education as there is a close association between the two. Will she also look at the issue of the quality of parenting? I was at a school in my constituency just a week ago, and I was told that children are presenting to school really very poorly parented as that is related to the subject that the hon. Lady has studied. It is not all children, of course, but too many are suffering in that way.”
“On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. You will not know this, but I have learned that independent experts have advised that Lincolnshire police are now at real risk of having to issue a section 114 notice—the equivalent of a public body declaring that it can no longer balance its budget. It comes after a long campaign, run my myself and colleagues, about Lincolnshire police funding more generally. Has the Home Secretary advised you on whether she intends to come to the House to address that, for the people of Lincolnshire are acutely worried that policing services in our county will cease to protect them from the risk and reality of crime and disorder?”
“I had not intended to contribute to this debate, but the hon. Gentleman has provoked me to do so by the character of his insight. It is brave and right of him to deconstruct the nonsense about toxic masculinity, and to emphasise that white working-class boys, of the kind that are prevalent in his constituency, are particularly disadvantaged by a system that has underestimated, indeed neglected, their needs. He mentioned NEETs. As an education Minister, I did my best to address that issue, but successive Governments have done insufficient. I congratulate him on bringing this debate and on what he has said in it.”
“I will praise the hon. Gentleman again. He is absolutely right about really valuing practical learning. I come from a similar background to him; I was not clever enough to be practical, so I had to become an academic. Re-establishing the idea that vocational, practical accomplishment has at least equal prowess to academic learning—I think it has greater prowess, actually—is fundamental. May I add one other example, with your indulgence, Madam Deputy Speaker? The hon. Gentleman will know of the Men’s Sheds movement, which is typically for older men. I visited the men’s shed in Long Sutton, of which I am president, and there was a youth shed bringing young people into a male community, allowing boys to share, learn and grow.”
“I pay tribute to the hon. Lady for her leadership of this campaign. The situation is worse still than she paints it to be, for the ombudsman made clear that the “DWP has clearly indicated that it will refuse to comply” with the ombudsman’s recommendations, inviting Parliament to step in to resolve the matter. This is officialdom closing ranks, is it not?”
“But it is not just our recognition that counts; the ombudsman too recognised exactly that. When an ombudsman states that maladministration in DWP’s communication about the Pensions Act 1995 resulted in the complainants losing “opportunities to make informed decisions about some things and to do some things differently”, and that that diminished their “sense of personal autonomy” and financial control—and that is just one of its findings; maladministration, inappropriate communications and the failure to deal with complaints punctuate the ombudsman’s findings—for a Government not to respond to the ombudsman is frankly unacceptable.”
“The purpose of this place is, of course, to make laws, to amend them and sometimes, if we are in opposition, to stop laws being made. But it has another purpose: to hold those with power to account. We do that as individual constituency MPs all the time, taking up cases on behalf of constituents, but this case not only affects the WASPI women in my constituency; I take it up for all the WASPI women, inspired by the leadership of my friend, the hon. Member for Salford (Rebecca Long Bailey), and others across the House. It is unusual in this place for Government Members of Parliament and the official Opposition—Labour MPs and Conservatives—the Liberal Democrats, the SNP, the DUP and Plaid Cymru to all come together in common cause. That speaks volumes. It says that we recognise that these women were unjustly treated.”
“Many, when they faced a longer period before they could retire, were in ill health. Many had caring responsibilities. Many were hard up. In campaigning for those women, mindful of those disadvantages, we are speaking for people who otherwise would be powerless. Minister, it is not too late to get this right. For the WASPI women have a just cause, and surely, in the name of decency as well as in the name of good democracy, justice must be done.”
“I have no doubt at all that it would have offered several options. Option A might have been to satisfy the WASPI women in full; option B might have been to come to a partial settlement, which they perhaps would have accepted; option C would have been to do nothing. The Government chose—despite all the pledges in opposition by the Deputy Prime Minister, the Work and Pensions Secretary and the Prime Minister himself—to take that final option of doing nothing. I find that very surprising. Knowing how reasonable the campaigners are, I suspect that, had a partial settlement been offered, they might well have met the Government halfway. They might have understood that the cost was substantial and that they had to compromise to some degree—although let us just explode one myth: that all these women are privileged and advantaged. Many were not.”
“I do agree with that. It was a case powerfully made by the hon. Member for Salford that this case is very much about the relationship between the ombudsman and Government, and between this House and Government. That connection between independent scrutiny by the ombudsman and our ability as a House to hold the Government to account lies at the heart of this issue, and that is exactly what I was about to say. This question is about the WASPI women, but it is also about something still more profound. I hope the Minister will recognise that, in the decisions he takes, he will set an important precedent—a precedent that will affect exactly those kinds of relationships. I will reveal to the House what the Minister already knows: when this matter was considered by Ministers, a submission would have come forward from officials.”
“The Minister is right to say that no party—indeed, no previous Government—can be excused in this respect, because this matter covers the time in office of several Governments. The difference is that members of his party, in opposition, said, “This injustice can’t go on. I have been a longstanding supporter of the WASPI campaign”, and that Labour “will compensate” the WASPI women, as it is “their money”. That was said by the current Work and Pensions Secretary and the current Deputy Prime Minister.”
“Order. I hope the hon. Gentleman will tailor his critique of the SNP Government to the spending review. I appreciate the thrust of his remarks, but he will understand my advice.”
“Order. This debate is not really about welfare in Scotland; it is about the spending review. [ Interruption. ] I take the point, but I would like the remarks to be tailored to the subject at hand.”
“I remind hon. Members that the Member in charge does not have the opportunity to wind up the debate. I call the Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero.”
“I have a vision of banking—I hope you might too, Madam Deputy Speaker—rooted in a sort of “Dad’s Army” approach: a Captain Mainwaring figure committed to his community, in close touch with his customers and caring about the businesses they run. That was not just a fiction in my younger years. I well remember going to a bank as a young man and asking if I could borrow £500 to buy an old car—I was a student at the time. The manager, a bit like Captain Mainwaring in character, invited me in, gave me a glass of sherry, interrogated me for half an hour and eventually said, “Yes, I think we can probably lend you the £500.” Imagine that scene now. At best, you would have an online connection with someone remotely situated—”
“In an economy in which standards of living are falling, productivity has stalled and the state grows ever bigger in the face of rising worklessness, it seems to me that the only beneficiaries of globalisation are a few people at the top of those corporate businesses. We need not monopolies, but a multiplicity of businesses, such as start-up firms, local firms, and firms that innovate and engage in new activities in the economy, rather than cement existing practices. Let us give those businesses what they need, which is greater freedom, while the big corporate monoliths need to be regulated so that they do not exploit the marketplace they dominate. Think for a moment of the banks.”
“Indeed, the pandemic exacerbated the power of greedy globalists. Following research on 17,000 big firms, the trade union Unite has highlighted that average profit margins have soared by 30% compared with the pre-pandemic period. In 2022, the profits of the 350 largest companies in Britain increased by about 89% compared with pre-pandemic levels. Contrast that if you will, Madam Deputy Speaker, with the plight of smaller businesses, which face ever greater costs and ever more unfair competition from their giant competitors. What of the claims of the enthusiastic globalists that the world would be a better place as a result of their activities? Do you remember the globalists—those people who were addicted to modernity and change? Who has really benefited?”
“The fear that many of us in this Chamber have about two-tier justice runs parallel to our certainty that there is a two-tier economy. Faceless, heartless multinational firms often have little in the way of roots here, and many tech firms use such rootlessness to justify decisions to pay little, if any, tax. Corporate behemoths have grown ever larger, ever more dominant in their sectors, ever more detached from their customers, and ever more determined to bend rules and evade justice. In recent years, we have seen profiteering by, for example, the major supermarkets, which very often give their suppliers—primary producers such as the farmers and growers in my constituency—a raw deal. We have seen them distort the food chain, yet take advantage of the disruption brought by the pandemic and the war in Ukraine.”
“Today, I speak in the interests of those small businesses, those entrepreneurs, those people who devote so much of their time, skill and energy for the common good—for the national interest and the common good drive all that I do in this place. Small and medium-sized businesses employing up to 250 people make up about 99% of businesses, but just think of the influence and effect of the other 1%. When SMEs are accused of wrongdoing or even of breaking the law, they often have little in the way of resources to defend themselves, so they are at the mercy of powerful regulators and the caprice of giant competitors. In contrast, the big multinational companies, which have come to dominate too much of our economy, have armies of compliance officers, lawyers and spin doctors to bat away legitimate concerns.”
“Speaking long before I was born, G. K. Chesterton said that “big business…is now organized like an army. It is, as some would say…militarism…without the military virtues.” Heaven knows what he would say if he was alive now, as global corporations have such influence on all our lives. Yet it is the small and medium-sized businesses in my Lincolnshire constituency and in constituencies across this country that are the backbone of our economy. They also provide the particularities—the colour and shape —of the places that each of us calls home. Those small and medium-sized businesses reinvest in the communities of which they are a part and provide opportunities for local people. We all know them from our daily experience as customers, but we also know them from the representations they make to us as Members of Parliament.”
“I think my right hon. Friend is referring to the £500 he still owes me from the days when I used to work for him. The point is that nowadays the connection between customers and suppliers has become at best detached and at worst remote. As I say, now you would have a conversation with some remotely situated person who knows nothing about you or your circumstances, and probably cares less.”
“My right hon. Friend, as ever, makes an apposite comment. The trading of data by big businesses has become a business in itself, in the way that he sets out. By contrast, we need firms to practise responsibility, not parrot slogans and virtue signal. They concentrate power and wealth with little regard to the community in which they sit, or even the country in which they are situated.”
“I am mindful, Madam Deputy Speaker, of a legal case involving those Vodafone franchisees; I have taken advice from the Table Office and amended my speech heavily as a result. However, I do think it is important to set out some of the context, in the broad terms that I have described, which relates to the behaviour of large companies that adopt the franchise model.”
“It is also a matter of who owns these corporate giants and overseas companies that own our critical national infrastructure. The Government recently approved the Vodafone-Three merger, and the latter company is owned by a Hong Kong-based conglomerate. I wonder how closely the Competition and Markets Authority looked into the owners and leadership of Three’s parent company, the CK group, and I wonder whether that group has ties with the Chinese state—perhaps the Minister can inform us tonight. This merger must not become yet another corporate bonanza for shareholders at the expense of our national interest and the common good. I sought this debate in particular following a meeting with a constituent who was previously a Vodafone franchisee, along with others from across the country.”
“As ever, the hon. Gentleman makes an apposite and worthy contribution to our considerations. I simply say this to the Minister. The Government have a lot of power in all kinds of ways. They certainly have the power to regulate the kinds of unfair practices I have begun to set out, but they also have power as a customer. Government procurement has never, under successive Governments, been used as well as it might be to support British businesses, and in particular British small businesses. My challenge to the Minister is to look at that again. Let us look at how the Government, as a huge customer of all kinds of businesses, can support small and medium-sized firms. Decades of non-intervention, driven by the mistaken belief in the triumph of liberal economics, have resulted in extraordinary numbers of foreign takeovers of British firms.”
“That is certainly the risk. I think mergers more generally need to be looked at closely. It is why we have the Competition and Markets Authority, and why these things are indeed considered in the terms I have described. More recently, of course, as my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) will know—as a former member of the Intelligence and Security Committee, of which I remain a member—the Government introduced other legislation in respect of security, large businesses, mergers and all kinds of similar and related matters. It is important to gauge the national interest in all kinds of ways when one considers business activity.”
“However, I will say no more about that, as it would be digressing from my main theme, and I can see an eagerness to intervene—I give way to my neighbour.”
“I have worked closely with the hon. Gentleman—as ever, he and I are on the same page here. He is absolutely right that franchising can be used as a method to exaggerate the power of the business at the heart of the franchise and to weaken the position of franchisees. My assertion is that that is common and is particular in the case of Vodafone.”
“I will give way to the hon. Member for North Durham (Luke Akehurst) and then to my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith).”
“I am grateful to my right hon. Friend, who takes a great interest in these matters, and that is precisely why I posed the earlier question to the Minister about how closely he and others had looked at that merger. I will say no more about it than that, but it does seem to me to be a legitimate question to ask: were those things considered in this particular case, and how are they generally considered? If my right hon. Friend is right that there are threats that result from this, under existing legislation and regulation it is perfectly possible for the Government to become involved in these kinds of commercial affairs.”
“I am again grateful to the hon. Gentleman. It seems to me that there is a mood across the House tonight that more must be done. This Minister, as an experienced Member of the House, will have gathered that that mood could easily, from this small beginning, become a crescendo that might endanger the very safety of his office and the Government as a whole, so let us hope that this is the beginning of a journey, for both the Government and the Minister, towards a regime that counters the very things that have been described by Members across the House.”
“They are ordinary people, like most of us, I guess, who simply want to get on and do the best for their family and their community. I know which side I am on. I am on the side of those people, because I know that they make so much difference in my constituency, and across the whole of our kingdom.”
“We must move away from a globalist, faceless corporate model that has enriched a few, and towards a different kind of economic order, in which we shorten supply lines, encourage small and medium-sized businesses, and understand that economics must serve a civil purpose. I call that fraternal economics —an economics in which community and economic activity are bound together in a common cause. We can build that kind of economic future, but it requires Government to know when to step forward to support business, and when to step back and not suffocate entrepreneurship. That future is within our grasp, but it will require this Government—perhaps any Government —to think afresh about the power balance between large, faceless businesses, and smaller entrepreneurs.”
“I cannot believe that this Minister does not feel as I do about corporate malpractice—about greedy, soulless, heartless firms that act irresponsibly and hide behind the high wall of their substance. Governments have a duty not only to promote entrepreneurship and business, but to protect entrepreneurs and ensure that businesses do not take unfair advantage of their staff. We must call time on the era of corporate giants using legal structures not as a framework for partnership, but as a shield for avoidance—for avoiding responsibility and decency. Brands that trade on their reputation and public trust must be held accountable for the actions that they take that cause real harm.”
“A key lesson from the Post Office scandal is that we must not allow the sophisticated power of a corporate body, or the impression created by an impressive balance sheet, to persuade us to ignore the voices of less powerful individuals who speak out. Many franchisees have given up stable jobs. Some have taken out personal loans, and some have remortgaged their home. They train staff, open stores, serve customers, and are told by the big business that they are partners; but when the going gets rough, when the commission cuts come with little warning, when franchisees’ performance plummets due to decisions beyond their control, and when stores are repossessed with inadequate notice, they are left out on their own, high and dry. No lifeline, no dialogue—just silence from the corporations that they once trusted.”
“Will the Minister confirm what steps the Government are taking to investigate allegations of inappropriate use of Government relief during the covid pandemic, specifically in relation to businesses with franchisees? Will the Minister confirm that all allegations of misappropriation of Government relief schemes intended for franchisees should be investigated as part of the inquiry into covid by the covid commissioner? Will the Minister urge banks to show leniency and support to those franchisees facing financial distress, and will he commit to looking afresh at the lack of enforceable regulations governing franchiser conduct?”
“People put their savings, their homes and their reputations on the line because they believe that a franchise agreement with a company such as Vodafone—there are others too—would be safe and secure. Last month, the Competition and Markets Authority confirmed the merger of Vodafone and Three. Will the Minister confirm that the matter of the problems with franchisees were discussed ahead of that merger being approved? Indeed, more broadly, can such a merger really be said to benefit the British public, given that it is forecast to cost 1,600 UK jobs and that evidence from overseas shows that countries with fewer mobile phone operators tend to charge higher prices to consumers?”
“Moreover, it has emerged that whistleblowers had warned a series of senior Vodafone executives that scores of its franchise store owners face financial ruin. What steps are the Government taking to regulate corporate businesses’ relationship with their franchisees? As I say, we are not speaking of powerful businesses with deep legal departments and balance sheets to absorb losses but ordinary people—mothers, fathers, sons and daughters—who saw an opportunity when they became a franchisee to build a meaningful business of their own under the banner of a global household name and to make a difference to their family, their community and the towns in which they are situated.”
“Too often, franchisees’ payments from those who franchise them are cut drastically and with little or no explanation. Contracts are often terminated with just a few days’ notice and stores repossessed with little notice, often without valid reasons for doing so, leaving debts and loans to be repaid with no income. Franchisees claim that they faced fines and clawbacks that were grossly disproportionate to the errors in question. In some cases, the errors that led to fines were the results of failures in major corporation systems, yet the financial burden was often unfairly placed on franchisees. Communications raising serious concerns, though made, were often unanswered and pressing issues were ignored for long periods of time, leaving franchisees without support or resolution to their problems.”
“Business rates relief was of huge significance and made a meaningful difference to people, as intended by the Chancellor at the time, my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond and Northallerton (Rishi Sunak). The Government’s stated purpose for covid-19 business relief was to assist small businesses to carry on trading at a financially difficult time when profits in bricks and mortar shops were much reduced. The question is, was that the reality? The fact that the Government later introduced caps on the relief indicates that it was intended to help small businesses—those to whom £100,000 makes a great difference—not to subsidise large globalist corporations with hundreds of stores and access to other types of relief. What is the Minister’s assessment of how that kind of funding was used during the covid pandemic?”
“It is worth noting that some corporations that benefited from that scheme, such as Tesco—although I hold no candle for Tesco generally—have since returned the money to the Government. The question is how Vodafone used that money: did it achieve its original purpose—I would be interested to hear the Minister’s answer to that question—or was it redirected in some way that was out of tune with the Government’s intention and the proper purpose? It is worth noting that that was available not only to Vodafone, but to all those organisations that had franchises. I wonder how other organisations handled the matter and how that compares with the circumstances surrounding Vodafone. The important thing to consider as we debate these matters is that the franchisees are small business owners with families—this was important to them.”
“I am most grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s support. During the pandemic, the UK Government introduced the business rates relief package, which allowed businesses with commercial leases to claim relief on their business rates. That was designed to help firms with physical stores compensate for lost footfall during the lockdowns, and it was an essential lifeline to those smaller businesses. This automatically applied to businesses through local councils. From 11 March 2020 to June 2021 the relief was 100% with no cash cap, and ratepayers with more than one property were entitled to relief for each eligible property. Franchisees were eligible to receive this relief, and it would have been automatically applied to stores operated by companies such as Vodafone and not through the franchise programme.”
“I thank the hon. Gentleman for the way in which he is responding. There is a close parallel between the way the Post Office is constructed—its business arrangement, and the connection between independent post offices and the centre—and the matters that I described. Will he ensure that his small business strategy includes something on franchising? That is a really important part of getting right our approach to regulation on the relationship between smaller businesses and corporate giants.”
“The Minister is absolutely right, of course. Contract law is well established and business contracts are enforceable in the way that he sets out, but the problem with franchising is that it is a hierarchical relationship that creates a kind of dependency. The franchisee is dependent on the larger business, so there is an in-built advantage if that larger business is inclined to be permissive in the way that it applies the terms of the contract, or even varies its terms. The parallel I drew in my speech was with supermarkets and primary producers. The supermarkets have so much power that the primary producer is implicitly weakened in that commercial relationship.”