House of Commons
Friday 25 June 1999
The House met at half-past Nine o'clock
PRAYERS
[Madam Speaker in the Chair]
PETITION
Health Products
9.33 am
Mr. John Bercow (Buckingham): I wish to present a petition on behalf of 77 of my constituents, headed by Susan Walters of Back to Nature, of Cornwalls place, High street, Buckingham, as part of the petition of Consumers for Health Choice, the Health Food Manufacturers Association and the National Association of Health Stores. The petition declares:
- We believe that the Government proposals which give the Medicines Control Agency (MCA) virtually unlimited powers to classify safe products as medicines, are wrong. This would mean that the MCA could remove at a stroke products that are vital to the good health of many consumers and are currently sold under the Food Law. This is an abuse of the democratic process and a denial of freedom of choice. We actively seek the creation of a new law appropriate to the special needs of safe, natural health products.
The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urge the Secretary of State for Health to grant an immediate moratorium from the Government and the MCA that will prevent them from declaring these safe products to be medicines except on the grounds of illegal claims for safety.
Innovation and Enterprise
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.--[Mr. Robert Ainsworth.]
9.34 am
The Minister of State, Department of Trade and Industry (Mr. Ian McCartney): Good morning, Madam Speaker. I welcome the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Mr. Duncan) to his Front-Bench duties as shadow Department of Trade and Industry spokesman. I look forward to future debates and discussions with him in this forum and during Question Time, and perhaps in Standing Committee. This is the first time that there has been a shadow spokesperson to whom I can speak eyeball to eyeball. If the trend continues, the House may have to provide a couple of high chairs.
Today's debate is on innovation and enterprise. I shall set that in context, in case the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton has forgotten the situation before the last general election, and I shall set out the Government's positive and progressive agenda in partnership with business and the enterprising parts of the economy.
We inherited from the previous Government a boom-and-bust economy, with a company going bust every three minutes of every working day. Interest rates reached 15 per cent. and stayed there for more than a year. We underwent the longest recession in the second half of the century. A million jobs were lost in manufacturing. Unemployment peaked and remained at more than 3 million for a considerable period. More than 1 million home owners were in negative equity. We were a nation with no confidence in our economic future.
Against that background, the Government have spent the past two years developing macro-economic strategies and micro-economic policies to show our commitment to innovation and enterprise in the economy generally, and in British business in particular. I am happy to have an opportunity this morning to set out, together with my hon. Friend the Minister for Small Firms, Trade and Industry, the Government's robust policies for achieving those goals. Those policies have been developed not by Ministers in isolation, but with industry, on behalf of industry and for industry. Consequently, they will succeed.
The Government believe that only by fostering a strong entrepreneurial business culture can we create the wealth that we need to improve everyone's quality of life. That goal will not be achieved just with words and good intentions. Only by creating wealth can we tackle social exclusion and poverty, solve our social problems, and build and expand public services such as the national health service and our education service.
Governments do not create wealth. Only businesses and the people who work in them can do that. However, business will succeed only if we foster a spirit of enterprise in our society and help those who run or work in businesses to seize their opportunities. We must work in partnership with businesses, higher education, trade unions and local authorities to create a culture of enterprise and innovation.
We have discarded the uncritical laissez-faire philosophy of the previous Conservative Government. The hon. Member for Rutland and Melton was proud to wear the badge of the laissez-faire strategy, and I think
that he still wears it. We believe that the Government have an important part to play in ensuring that those with the will to succeed have a fair chance. We can do that by creating a supportive and stable economic environment, by helping the academic and business community to exploit knowledge to everyone's advantage, and by helping to promote an entrepreneurial culture in the United Kingdom and across the European Community.
The Government's policies to create a stable macro-economic framework are already paying dividends. Inflation and interest rates are at their lowest for more than 20 years. Employment has increased by more than 400,000. Long-term unemployment has fallen by 50 per cent. and youth unemployment has been halved. Industrial harmony is in evidence, with only 23,000 man-days per month lost due to industrial action since the election, compared with 100,000 in the last year of the Conservative Government.
We recognise that the level of the pound is causing some difficulties for exporters, but we must not over-emphasise the issue of sterling. Manufacturers across Europe are struggling as a result of the global downturn. Thankfully the latest survey suggested that things are starting to improve for our manufacturers, and yesterday the pound was at its lowest level for two years against the dollar.
Since coming into office, the Government have moved decisively to encourage both new businesses and the enterprise investment culture. We intend to do more to give all who create wealth a greater stake in the wealth that they generate, which is why we introducing a new programme of shares for all in which employees will be able, for the first time, to buy shares in their own companies from their pre-tax income. Every employer will be able to match, tax free, what the employee buys.
Next year, we will introduce a new enterprise management incentive, which will provide help for smaller companies with potential for rapid growth that are seeking to recruit or retain key personnel by offering them equity remuneration. The scheme will allow tax relief for incentives of up to £100,000--but there is more to supporting business and encouraging innovation and enterprise than tax measures, important though those are.
That is why we will be setting up the Small Business Service in April next year. The new body will have three main functions: improving the quality and coherence of Government support programmes, helping firms to meet the demands of regulation and, most important of all, acting as a strong voice for small business at the heart of Government. Next week, we will be issuing a consultation document setting out our proposals in detail.
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Minister for Small Firms, Trade and Industry, who has been the champion of that proposal in the Government, and the co-ordinator across Departments. He knows all about small businesses and being enterprising and successful, and having him on the Front Bench has paid dividends. We are the first Government to bring people from the enterprise culture into government at policy-making level to manage the work of the Government day to day and to promote our strategy on the economy in support of innovation, enterprise and the development of the small and medium-sized enterprise culture.
The Government cannot meet all the needs of small firms, nor should we attempt to try, but we want to ensure that Government support programmes offer a ladder of opportunity for small businesses at all stages of development--from the initial conception of a business idea, through start-up, taking on employees for the first time, and managing growth and movement into new markets. We also need to ensure that business is not constrained by other Government action, especially in relation to regulation.
That is why we announced a tougher approach to regulatory control in the modernisation White Paper in March. For the first time, we are compiling a forward programme of regulatory proposals that will enable Ministers to decide collectively on how to minimise regulatory impacts and burdens, and how to manage and reduce the cumulative impact of regulation. That is being done in partnership, involving the stakeholders at each stage in agreeing on whether regulation is required in the first place, determining whether a regulation is viable, considering what the impact of regulation will be and agreeing on how best to introduce it non-disruptively.
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