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Mr. Dawson: Is the hon. Gentleman saying that he would advocate strongly with his party that the Conservatives should go into the next election calling for the abolition of the national minimum wage? Does he support the cowboy economy that has been so graphically described to me by one of my business constituents, where people are exploited at work?
Mr. Bercow: No, I do not support exploitation at work. Regrettably, I did not have the pleasure of the company of the hon. Member for Lancaster and Wyre (Mr. Dawson) during the Committee's consideration of the National Minimum Wage Bill. It would have been a delight to welcome him. Had he been on the
Committee--I accept that it was not his fault that he was not--he would have heard me explain at some length how, when I was in the private sector, I took great pains to ensure that a colleague who was wrongly denied a bonus by her employers, and was too cowed to pursue the point, got what she was entitled to receive. Some of my hon. Friends went so far as to suggest that I was a champion of the under-privileged. It is not for me to overstate my case to the House. However, most good employers who can afford to do so pay decent wages and afford their employees decent conditions, and that is right.
It was the specific point about the enormously burdensome application of the minimum wage and the poor notice of the imminent burden on which I was focusing. I understand the eagerness of the hon. Member for Lancaster and Wyre, eagerness to know how the Conservative party intends to fight the next election but, with great respect, we are only two years after the last election. The hon. Gentleman is a person of good intentions, but it is a bit rich of him to expect us to provide him with an advance copy of the next Conservative election manifesto. If that is what he is requesting, I am afraid that I must politely decline.
Mr. Wills:
We want to know the Conservative party's policy on the national minimum wage. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman knows what he thinks about the national minimum wage. Would he repeal it if the Conservatives ever came back to power?
Mr. Bercow:
I am disappointed. I thought that the Under-Secretary had got the point the first time, but he did not. The Conservative Opposition have made it clear that we thought that it was unwise to introduce a national minimum wage of a statutory character. We were joined in that by the Federation of Small Businesses, the Forum of Private Business, the Confederation of British Industry, British Chambers of Commerce and the Institute of Directors. If the Under-Secretary wants to know now what we intend to say at the general election, he is inviting me to do something that it is not reasonable to expect me to do.
We will make clear our intentions at the next election. The Under-Secretary is ordinarily a patient fellow, but I know that there are beads of sweat upon his brow in eager anticipation of discovering what we intend. However, I hasten to assure him that, if he is patient, Pandora's box will be opened in due course. He need not be concerned on that point. We will have a policy, clearly set out, to appeal to the electorate, to business and to all reasonable-minded people who know the cost of what the Government are doing.
The Minister sought to assuage the concerns of the House about works councils by saying that there is no proposal on the table. He and the Under-Secretary ought to know of the enthusiasm of Padraig Flynn and others in the European Commission for introducing proposals for national works councils. It has been variously suggested that such councils would apply to firms with fewer than 50 or even as few as 20 employees.
It is no good the Minister implying that the Government would successfully fight works councils by use of the veto, as I hope that he is sufficiently well informed to
know that they do not have a veto, because they foolishly signed up to the social chapter, the opportunity to do which the previous Government wisely eschewed. Much of the legislation arising from the social chapter is determinable by qualified majority voting, so we have no veto.
The first President of the Board of Trade in this Government, now the Leader of the House, told the Select Committee on Trade and Industry that she was opposed to national works councils. She then went into the lions' den and appeared on the BBC's ""On the Record", where she was interviewed, if memory serves me correctly, on 9 November 1997 by Jonathan Dimbleby.
There was a most interesting exchange. Mr. Dimbleby pressed her on works councils and she reiterated her opposition to the plans being mooted in the Commission. He asked what she would do if the Commission pressed ahead and she was outnumbered, given that the matter was determinable by qualified majority voting. It is only right to record for posterity her legendary response. She said, "Well, er, we shall see how things go."
Mr. Wills:
The hon. Gentleman has just said that about the national minimum wage.
Mr. Bercow:
I thought that my answer was a little more lucid, and it did not include an "er".
The right hon. Lady had no idea what she would do. The concern that my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton raised about works councils remains very real and very worrying for businesses the length and breadth of the United Kingdom.
The administrative regulations relating to the working families tax credit will have a damaging impact on small businesses. Then we have the child care credit, the disabled persons learning credit and the student loan repayment administration regulations. Whatever the intrinsic merits or demerits of those measures as public policy, they all entail a shuffling off of responsibility from Government agencies to beleaguered small businesses.
On top of everything else with which those businesses have to contend--including the macro-economic climate, international trading conditions and local employment markets--they are faced with damaging imposts from a Government who are insensitive to, and usually unconscious of, their needs.
Even if firms do relatively little cross-border trade, they have to comply with the regulations on self-assessment for transfer pricing, and the perverse manner in which the Inland Revenue operates is such that the normal principle that one is innocent until proven guilty does not apply. It is necessary for small firms to demonstrate compliance with the regulations and they are assumed to be guilty unless they are able to demonstrate that they are innocent to the satisfaction of the bureaucrats.
I have mentioned several serious issues and there are many others with which I could favour the House if only there were time to do so.
Mr. James Gray (North Wiltshire):
Go on!
Mr. Bercow:
My hon. Friend is cheekily encouraging me to dilate upon those matters, but that would be unfair. I had an exchange with the hon. Member for Croydon,
I have given practical examples of measures that are injurious to small businesses. There is an extraordinary mismatch between what Ministers say in their speeches and the truth about what is happening.
Mr. Gray:
I had hoped that my hon. Friend would address a damaging press release--IR 35--put out by the Inland Revenue, which bears down heavily on contractors in the information technology and telecommunications industries. It will put most of them out of business on the assumption that, as contractors, they are merely trying to avoid national insurance. Interestingly, that policy was announced in a press release, not announced by a Minister in a speech. Is that how the other measures that my hon. Friend mentioned were announced?
Mr. Bercow:
That is a growing tendency, and Madam Speaker has expressed concern about it on several occasions. I would not seek to take the name of Madam Speaker in vain, because that would be improper, but I do not need to look into a crystal ball when I can read Hansard. Madam Speaker has many times said that it is grossly unsatisfactory that Ministers disclose policy intentions via press conference, written answer or leak to favoured journalists, instead of paying this elected House the respect of announcing policies in the House and subjecting themselves to interrogation on them. That practice is emblematic of the arrogance, the presidentialism and the sneering disdain for alternative viewpoints that is regularly exhibited by Ministers and, not infrequently, by Labour Back Benchers.
Mr. Butterfill:
I was until recently a director of the Delphi Group, which is this country's largest placer of information technology contractors, and I can confirm that the damage that is being done to industry is incalculable. The United Kingdom used to be the largest suppliers of IT contractors in the world, apart from the United States of America, and what is happening is driving those people abroad to Europe or the USA. The UK economy is losing an important source of talent, energy and innovation.
Mr. Bercow:
My hon. Friend is right to underline how serious the situation is. When Ministers talk, as they regularly do, about encouraging exports, it is horrifying to think that that is what they mean. We want to export products to make money, to keep staff, to increase employment opportunities and to generate wealth to make UK plc more successful and better able to provide the quality of public services that a civilised community is entitled to expect. We do not want to export talent. We do not want a brain drain or to find that businesses cannot operate here and choose instead to go elsewhere. The fact that that is happening on a significant scale in an industry with which my hon. Friend is closely acquainted is very serious and I ask the Minister to guarantee--a simple nod of his head will suffice--that he intends to deal with that point in his reply to the debate.
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