Mr Toby Perkins
MP for Chesterfield · Labour · United Kingdom
“The hon. Member for Bicester and Woodstock (Calum Miller) is absolutely right to say that what is behind this is the deep unpopularity of President Milei; it is not anything actually that the UK has done.”
“In Chesterfield, there will be unmitigated despair at the statement we have heard today from my right hon. Friend. For the authorities for which she is doing a review—the 14 that thought they had got their decision in July—could she clarify the basis of that review?”
“It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond. I congratulate the hon. Member for Waveney Valley (Adrian Ramsay) on securing this debate.”
“The report spells out the link between degradation overseas and the impact here. The assessment lays out the consequences: food insecurity, economic insecurity, increased migration and refugees, increased interstate competition, conflict and geopolitical instability, all of which will threaten us here at home.”
“The Government are right to take their time and make sure that they get this right—we saw what happened when the previous Government did not do the work that was needed. This is a delicately balanced decision.”
“Thirdly, will the Minister consider bringing forward the fourth national adaptation programme? NAP3, published by the previous Government in 2023, was deemed ineffective by the Climate Change Committee. NAP4 is not due until 2028, but can we afford to wait two more years before we have an adequate plan?”
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“That is an important piece of work by a very important organisation that ensures that these issues are brought before the Government and that the Government are forced to consider the legacy that exists in our older industrial areas and cannot close their eyes to the poverty and deprivation that have resulted particularly from the collapse of the mining industry, but also from post-industrialisation—the attack on the manufacturing sector that happened, as others have said, under the Conservative Governments of 1979 to 1997. Therefore, the work of the Industrial Communities Alliance is incredibly important, and my hon. Friend reflected its report very well. My hon. Friend spoke many times about the northern powerhouse and whether that was a real thing or simply a chimera—an illusion—or possibly just a press release.”
“It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell, for what I think is the first time. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris) on securing the debate and on his extensive and incredibly important contribution. As we have heard in the other contributions in what has been a one-sided debate, the issues that he raises about his community are felt in many other communities in older industrial areas. My hon. Friend quoted extensively from the Industrial Communities Alliance report.”
“The situation cannot be resolved with a press release or a photo opportunity; substantial partnership and cross-agency work between all organisations—central Government, local government, the business community, the voluntary sector and health authorities—over a considerable period is required to alleviate the situation. My hon. Friend will be aware that my constituency of Chesterfield features in the Industrial Communities Alliance report. The area had a significant history of coalmining and manufacturing, much of which has now gone. Chesterfield was once a town in which five or six employers employed 3,000 or 4,000 people each; and now it is a town in which 3,000 or 4,000 employers employ five or six people each. The changing face of our economy poses significant challenges, including inequality.”
“I could not agree more. My hon. Friend’s contribution was speaking to many of the partnership approaches that were taken under the last Government. These problems are complex. He is absolutely right to talk about the combination of poverty, historical benefit dependency and ill health that results from what people have put their bodies through while working in heavy industry and from the link, which other hon. Members referred to, between poverty and ill health more generally. A co-ordinated approach and a Government who take the situation seriously are required. The Government must prioritise the regeneration of our industrial areas and recognise that the situation is not easily resolved.”
“Self-employment is sometimes a sign of a local economy’s weakness; and at other times self-employment should be welcomed. It is important to recognise such insecurity in the workplace. He may also have been referring to bogus self-employment. Some people who appear to the majority of us to be self-employed are actually in insecure employment.”
“Friend also spoke about local enterprise partnerships, and I will speak in more detail about their role and the previous role of regional development agencies and how the Government’s decisions prevented them from being as effective as they could have been, particularly when their help was really needed. He raised a couple of issues that I want to explore. He talked about the insecurity that goes with the increase in self-employment. I was self-employed for six years before first coming to Parliament, and I know that self-employment is an insecure line of work, but we should be encouraging self-employment, which is a great thing. Simultaneously, we must recognise that some people set up their own businesses because there are no other options.”
“I agree with my hon. Friend. I am referring to what happened in such areas, particularly after the closure of the coalmines and manufacturing sector. The irony of the Government’s approach to welfare—they suggest that there is a group of people who want to live on welfare—is that that was precisely Mrs Thatcher’s approach when she shut all the pits. She went to all these people, shut down entire communities and threw them out of work. She put huge numbers of people on incapacity benefit and parked them there for a long time. Inasmuch as there was a history of welfare dependency, it was Mrs Thatcher who caused it, and my hon. Friend is right to clarify that point. My hon.”
“This debate has been important in putting the issues before the Government, but we need them to stop the rhetoric and start the action; if they did, our communities might get the support that they deserve.”
“We support a Government with a commitment to a high-wage, high-skill workforce; devolution to English city and county regions that puts local councils at the heart of building up the older industrial areas; dealing with the huge increase in the productivity fall under this Government; an access to finance system in which money goes to businesses in our older industrial areas; expanding the capacity and strength of the local enterprise partnerships; fair funding for local authorities in the poorest areas; and a reform of business rates that supports small businesses in our communities. That is the kind of programme that will start to support and improve our older industrial areas.”
“We believe that local areas and local authorities should be supported where they are succeeding in attracting and supporting businesses by retaining more of the business rate revenue generated by growth to invest in building further success. We also need greater decentralisation of Government infrastructure, so that more Government money is spent in the older industrial areas.”
“Strengthening local enterprise partnerships so they can provide greater capacity and stronger services is an important part of the solution, as is strengthening local authorities. We welcome steps to strengthen the combined authority in Greater Manchester, but we want more combined authorities to tackle the chronic problems of poor skills, infrastructure and economic development. We need reform of our business rate system, which has worked against business development in older industrial areas. If we had had the business rate re-evaluation counselled by the last Government, business rate bills for people in my hon. Friend’s constituency would be hundreds if not thousands of pounds lower and business rate bills in central London would be higher. That would have made a big impact on our local communities.”
“Many local enterprise partnerships are working hard to make a contribution, but it was a strange decision at a time when the economy was desperate for growth—we should remember that we already had growth then, in 2010 at the end of the last Government, but we still needed a great deal more—for the Government to shut the regional development agencies and set up those fledgling agencies with limited resources and an unclear role. They have all attempted to the best of their ability to find a role, but they have been inconsistent in their ability to do so. Only now, five years after they were desperately needed, are some of them starting to come to fruition. That is another Government measure that has had a negative impact.”
“There is a substantial gap in the ability of businesses in older industrial areas to access finance. The access to finance market is much less competitive there, so the amount of money lent by the banking sector to our businesses is substantially different depending on location: £2,647 per head of population was lent to businesses in London, but less than half that was lent to businesses in the north-east and the east midlands. Entrepreneurs in areas with huge growth potential are crying out for support but finding that, unless they live in an area that is already coping better than most with the post-crash world, the Government’s door is shut to them. My hon. Friend the Member for Easington referred to the closure of One North East and the local enterprise partnership’s ineffectiveness in his case.”
“Likewise, although we have waited an age for a final decision on a new runway for London, Charles de Gaulle airport outside Paris has had four runways for years. There are many reasons why the endemic challenges in the older industrial areas have not been addressed. The Government are exacerbating problems. The policies of a truly one nation Government would help overcome regional disparities, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Easington discussed, spending on infrastructure increases such disparities. Spending per head on London is 24 times higher than on the north-east of England. He quoted statistics that bear repeating; I also have them. The amount spent on Crossrail alone is nine times more than the amount earmarked for rail projects in the whole of Yorkshire, the north-east and the north-west.”
“Professor Van Reenen, head of the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics, has said: “By Thursday lunchtime the other” major countries in Europe “have produced as much as it takes us to produce by Friday afternoon… So basically, we could take every Friday off if we could be as productive as those other countries and earn the same amount of money.” The productivity challenge is partly linked to the lack of investment and the short-termism that other colleagues have mentioned. For too long, the British economy has taken a short-term approach to matters of research and development. There are far fewer people involved in R and D in this country than in many of our European competitors.”
“What an appalling legacy this Government will leave in terms of that increase in child poverty. We already hear that this Government are thinking of repealing the Child Poverty Act 2010, so that they will no longer be held to account for that increase in child poverty, but in communities throughout our country, people sitting around the kitchen table know the reality of life under this Government. There has been a huge increase in the productivity gap.”
“Under this Government, work alone no longer pays enough to allow people the dignity of being able to feed their family. More than 5 million people are now in low-paid jobs, and more than 250,000 are estimated to earn less than the national minimum wage. The problem of low pay has got significantly worse under this Government. Not only has the national minimum wage fallen in real terms since 2010; the official figures show that without action to tackle low wages, spending on tax credits for people in work is set to rise by an estimated £2.5 billion over the course of this Parliament. Only this Government could think that the response to that environment of low pay, and to all those people who work hard all week and still do not have enough money at the end of it to put food on their table for their kids, is to cut tax credits.”
“Areas throughout our country face substantial challenges: for example, Cornwall, which we might have expected to be represented here. None the less, a specific challenge faces the older industrial areas, and it is important to reflect that. Many Members have discussed why we are in this position. There are three or four key reasons. The first is the failure to invest in retraining and vocational skills for the forgotten 50%, leaving people in the older industrial areas vulnerable to falling into a life of low pay. Far too many people in the UK today do a hard day’s work and still live in poverty and visit the food bank on the way home. The Prime Minister continually tells us that a job is the route out of poverty, but increasingly, people in poverty are also in work.”
“The Labour party will give considerable thought to it over the next five years as we attempt to put together a programme that can again win the support of the British people. Income is spread unequally across the UK’s regions and nations. The average household income in London is massively higher than in the north-east. In addition to income, overall wealth is unevenly spread across the UK—the average household in the south-east has almost twice as much wealth as an average household in Scotland—and different regions of the country have a different percentage share of UK gross disposable household income: London and the south-east have 32%, and the north-east has just 3.5%. Those disparities exist. It is important to recognise that poverty is not the preserve of the north.”
“Friend the Member for Easington mentioned, and recognised the massive challenges that face older industrial communities. We recently saw the announcement of a £200 million cut in health promotion, which will have a significant impact. The powerful contributions to today’s debate have expressed the importance of this issue. In terms of earned income, the United Kingdom is the fourth most unequal of the 30 countries in the OECD; only the USA, Israel and Mexico are more unequal than we are. My right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) was absolutely right to say that inequality is one of the huge challenges facing our country, although not only our country.”
“We saw huge regeneration of our great cities. On the motorway in my area we have the new junction 29A, which is still known as “Skinner’s junction” after the campaigning of my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr Skinner), and next to it is a huge new industrial estate. The Industrial Communities Alliance report says that there are 4,900 extra jobs in Bolsover, which is one of the most successful older industrial areas in terms of employment growth precisely because the Labour Government made the decision to invest in such communities. So we can get results if we invest. The Coalfields Regeneration Trust did so much work and was strongly supported by the Labour Government. The Labour Government made huge investments in health promotion, which my hon.”
“Friend the Member for Neath said that the scar of mine closures is still felt today, and she spoke powerfully about the impact of ill health and its link with poverty. She also made an important point about the impact of spending cuts on local government and the knock-on impact on the voluntary sector. We all know that, over many years, the voluntary sector was incredibly powerful and important in the Labour Government’s approach to regeneration. Ironically, a Conservative Government who came to power promising us a big society and a revolution in the voluntary sector have achieved the absolute opposite: a weakened voluntary sector that is unable to pick up the pieces in many of the ways that it did previously. Many issues raised in the report, complex and long-standing as they are, were being addressed under the Labour Government.”
“After hearing Glasgow and Sheffield Members reflecting on the challenges in their cities and hearing my hon. Friends the Members for Easington and for Neath (Christina Rees) talk about the impact on former mining communities like mine in Chesterfield, I am struck that there is a lot more that links us than divides us in the industrial areas of England, Scotland and Wales. We should consider that as we think more broadly about the direction in which our country is going. A huge number of issues affect us all. We have shared experiences and new opportunities, but we have also endured and shared painful legacies. My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley said that the legacy of Mrs Thatcher has cast a dark shadow over older industrial areas, and she reflected on the importance of rebalancing our economy. My hon.”
“This is a multifaceted issue. I feel like I have been responding to my hon. Friend’s speech for longer than it took him to deliver it, so I will move on. [ Interruption. ] He rightly says that we have a bit of time. There were other important contributions. The hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) reflected on the extent to which industrial jobs have gone from her constituency. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh), she represents a city that has seen huge regeneration and positive change, but there is still the legacy of industrial decline in such older industrial communities. When listening to the hon. Member for Glasgow Central, I was struck by the similarity between the experiences of her constituents and the experiences described by other hon. Members.”
“I am grateful to the Minister for giving way on the subject of misleading constituents. She is a representative of a marginal east midlands town, and up until the election a few weeks ago all her constituents believed the Government were going to deliver electrification of the midland main line. The truth is that, as soon as the election was over, the Government said, “Actually, we are not going ahead with it.” It may be a pause, or it may never happen. The Minister ought to be careful when she accuses other people of misleading their constituents.”
“The Secretary of State seems keen to talk about increased majorities. Many of the 21,829 people who recently voted for me in Chesterfield are concerned about the state of our roads. They are saying clearly that the state of Britain’s roads is dangerous and damaging to people’s cars, not only in Derbyshire but across the country, and should be a major priority. When will the Government take seriously the issue of potholes, and when will we see a serious plan to get them sorted?”
“We are told that the EU referendum Bill will be introduced after the Prime Minister has negotiated reforms. Will members of his Cabinet be allowed to vote against staying in the EU? Will they be allowed to vote no and stay in his Cabinet?”
“The Minister seems to be entering the realms of fantasy when he claims that the limited steps the Government have taken will put an “end to the UK’s late payment culture once and for all.” —[ Official Report , 24 March 2015; Vol. 594, c. 1357.] According to the latest BACS figures, there were more than £46 billion of late payments last year—the highest figure on record—and that figure has continued to grow over the course of this Government. How much and by when would late payments need to fall for him to consider his steps successful in eradicating this culture once and for all?”
“In the event of marketing arrangements which meant that the only place that beers could be purchased was direct from the brewer, do the provisions take account of the fact that the tenant’s right to do so might be difficult to put into practice?”
“I endorse what the Minister says about the need to deal with this matter urgently. Given that urgency, will she explain why the provision she is now bringing forward under the Equality Act 2010 has been sitting on the statute book for five years? Why is it that only at the fag end of this Parliament are we seeing some action, which the Opposition have been calling for throughout those years?”
“We entirely agree with the Government that encouraging future investment in the stock of public houses is a crucial element in the future success of the industry, but, over four months since the original victory for clause 42, that still leaves a huge unanswered question about the scale of investment that constitutes “substantial”. I think that my party’s record on this issue means that campaigners will have confidence that the statutory code that addresses it under a future Labour Government will be consistent with the approach—”
“There remains the thorny issue of the right of the tenant to offer a substantial investment in their public house in exchange for giving up the right to use the next rent review period as a trigger to request an MRO assessment. The letter dated 16 March from the Minister, Baroness Neville-Rolfe, to the noble Lords Mendelsohn and Stevenson details the Government’s intentions with regard to new clause 43 and specifies that it must not be used to abuse the waiver. However, this will still leave those who fought this cause for many years with considerable unease that this creates the potential for too broad an exemption for too small an investment.”
“As we fast approach the general election, who knows when will be the next time a Liberal Democrat Minister will have the opportunity to bring through a piece of legislation? She has done a good job in reflecting the wishes of the House and has acted in good faith on pub company regulation. Their lordships’ amendments broadly achieve the objective of striking the devilishly difficult balance between proper protection for pub tenants while not imposing an overly rigid straitjacket on the industry with the potential to discourage future investment. They are positive steps forward that have faithfully built on the spirit of the historic clause 42 proposed by the hon. Member for Leeds North West (Greg Mulholland). We recognise that some aspects of the proposals will sensibly need to be included in the pubs code through secondary legislation.”
“We said that far more robust action would be needed if this Bill was to deliver on the steps small businesses required and to take action on things like abuses of the labour market and their impact on workers in every constituency in the land. On the subject of pubs, we said that a successful small business Bill—a Labour small business Bill—would have introduced a code with a market rent only option, which the Bill now indeed contains. It would be churlish not to recognise that the Government have ultimately acted in good faith on pub company legislation. I should place it on the record that this is the last piece of legislation that the Minister will be bringing through in this Parliament.”
“It is a great pleasure to speak on the amendments proposed by the noble Lords. On 16 July, we debated the Second Reading of this Bill. It was interesting, in preparing for this debate, to re-read the contributions that were made then and those that have been made by Labour Members in both Houses during its subsequent stages. Though modesty would usually prevent me from quoting extensively from the contribution that I made, it would be strange not to reflect on how widely our critique of the Bill has been adopted by the Government. We said that it had the potential to make a real difference to small businesses but that the steps that it originally proposed were a collection of faint nods in the right direction of key issues that had emerged under this Government.”
“I anticipate that the same would be true of a Liberal Democrat-influenced Administration, although it would be good to hear the Minister clarify that. It would also be good to hear from the Conservative party whether its manifesto will follow the Bill’s principles, or whether it will take a different approach. The industry and campaigners have the right to expect that.”
“That is an excellent question. The whole reason this issue is being placed in secondary legislation is that we recognise that there is a very difficult balance to strike. The formula needs to be dependent on the relationship of the investment to the value of the pub. For some pubs, a £30,000 investment might be substantial. For a town centre or city centre pub, a £200,000 investment might not be so substantial. There needs to be some sort of relationship between the rateable value of a pub, the amount that it turns over, and the amount of investment. The hon. Gentleman is echoing my point, which is that this has been left very open. A great deal of work would need to be done. I assure the House that under a future Labour Government the principles laid out by Baroness Neville-Rolfe are exactly how we would see this.”
“Excellent. I am glad that that has been placed on the record. That will give people considerable confidence in the Bill, and many campaigners will be grateful to hear what the Minister has just said. In the unlikely event of a Conservative victory, we will hold him to it.”
“In that eventuality, if a brewer stops selling through their wholesale business, which they are perfectly entitled to do, a tenant who is in principle free of tie will still be forced, under the provision, to buy from that brewer as the only option available. We will need to look at that again.”
“The Government have probably got the balance right in Lords amendment 47, which accepts our suggestion of extending code protections—apart from the MRO option—to tenants whose pubs are sold from a pub-owning company covered by the Bill’s provisions to a company outside the Bill’s scope. Lords amendment 46 also performs a delicate balancing act by retaining the protection for pub-owning brewers to offer free of tie while also retaining their right to insist that their product is marketed. The question I asked the Minister is important, because some pub-owning brewers might think that retaining their stock and the right to market it is more important than their wholesale business.”
“The Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson) and I have enjoyed many a to and fro on the subject during the Bill’s various stages, but I remain of the view that, in voting the way we did, some egregious practices may not be covered by the protections. However, without that concession, we would have been less likely to win the support of the House for the MRO option. In the final analysis, that prize was worth the sacrifice. As a gesture of good will to the industry and as a matter of honour, this House should stick to what we have given it to believe we were legislating on, namely a code containing provisions for businesses owning more than 500 pubs. We are therefore pleased to support the Government’s commitment.”
“On the subject of tenants of pub-owning companies that go into administration, we fear that, at a time when the whole future of a large number of pubs would be very uncertain, the original provision would have made the task of the administrator a great deal more difficult. When they would be attempting to bring order to a complicated situation, some of the stock they were trying to sell off to new providers would disappear and move into the free trade sector. We concluded that that would make it much more difficult for pubs to survive in the event of a major pub-owning company failure. For those reasons, we support those omissions from Lords amendment 39. On Lords amendments 47 to 53, we are pleased that the Government have not sought to reintroduce to the code pub-owning companies with fewer than 500 pubs.”
“Ironically, it would have meant that when a pub was sold from a major pub chain to a microbrewer, fledgling pub operator or family brewer, the MRO could have been triggered, acting as a disincentive to the sort of business transaction we want to support and encourage as part of the diversification of the pub market. That means that campaigners and the next Government will need to be vigilant to prevent any attempts to use the amendment to game the legislation and exempt from the rights companies with any association with companies that we would expect the legislation to cover. The Minister in the other place has made specific the Government’s intentions and we have heard that there is consistency across the coalition.”
“Lords amendment 39 retains the triggers of renewal of tenancy, rent assessments and significant and unexpected price increases or other events beyond the tenant’s control that have a significant impact on their level of trade. The amendment omits the transfer of title and administration triggers that were in the original clause. On balance, we support that omission, albeit not without reservation. We believe that the impact on the natural order of a competitive market that would have resulted from pub tenants having the right to opt out at the point of transfer of title would have caused a real disincentive to invest.”
“We understand that Lynton Crosby has been telling the Conservatives to get ready for the past four or five months, but they never seem to reach the point he promises. We will no doubt debate that over the next six weeks. The Government’s Lords amendment 39 replaces clause 42. We were proud to support the new clause tabled by the hon. Member for Leeds North West. We did not think that Report stage was the time to get into a detailed discussion of all the nuances of each individual line, and we know that a tremendous amount of work went into drafting a clause that would offer all the necessary protections. We felt, however, that ultimately it was too prescriptive and could have unintended consequences, and we are pleased to have worked with the Government on the drafting of the new provision.”
“I fear that the Minister is rather over-selling the measures he proposes, welcome though they are. When he says that 30 days will be the norm and 60 days the exception and nothing beyond it, will he make clear what happens when businesses do not pay within that time frame? What sanctions will they face under this new regime?”
“We very much welcome the fact that the Government have listened to some of the specific proposals we made on ensuring that the threshold for a creditors meeting should be changed to “(a) 10% in value of the creditors; (b) 10% in number of the creditors; (c) 10 creditors.” We think that is a much stronger amendment, providing the support that that industry needs to ensure that it continues to provide a service that gets record amounts of money back to creditors and is also successful in saving jobs and businesses.”
“On Lords amendment 25, we are pleased that the Government have acceded to our demand that the Equality and Human Rights Commission be excluded from any of the regulatory provisions in the Bill. This will relate specifically to the work of the small business appeals champions. On the subject of creditor meetings, I should like to draw to the attention of the House the donation made to my office of employment support from R3, the insolvency regulator. The intention of the original Bill was to end once and for all the practice of insolvency practitioners holding physical creditor meetings in all types of insolvency procedures. We felt that that was a mistake and that it could disengage creditors and weaken the strength of the world-leading insolvency regime that we have here in the UK.”
“The Bill establishes small business appeals champions, whose role will be to watch non-economic Government regulators and encourage them to improve the impact on business of their policies, their processes and their approach on appeals and complaints. In broad terms we welcome this idea, but many bodies have questioned how the champions will work in practice and what relationship they will have with the general growth duty in the Deregulation Bill. We welcome the fact that the Government have taken up our argument that the guidance to the small business appeals champions in relation to the exercise of their functions should be laid before Parliament for full scrutiny and debate.”
“He might have decided that he did not want to support our proposals, but it is not true to say that they did not exist. However, we are pleased that the Government have made some concessions and accepted our fundamental argument that information on performance, as well as policies, must be published. This will allow large companies to be judged by their deeds, not just by their words. However, we believe that there should be a financial backstop, such as an automatic interest payment or a fines regime, as outlined in our proposals. So it remains to be seen how effective the Bill will be. It is stronger as a result of the interventions by the Labour Opposition but more could have been done and, regrettably, we will have to return to this issue in the next Parliament.”