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Mr. Bercow: In reflecting on the need for a generous compensation scheme, what assessment has my hon. Friend made of those people who, in 1996 or 1997, might have contemplated starting a career in fur farming in the apparently confident knowledge that the Labour party was not committed to abolishing the industry?
Mr. Atkinson: My hon. Friend makes an interesting point. I had not considered it, but perhaps the Minister will respond to it.
My final point concerns the House's ability to review the compensation scheme, when it is at last agreed. If at that time the Government are still talking about £400,000 plus four times that figure for income, they will need to be much more generous. I hope that the Minister will give the House a more generous estimate of the amounts involved in the compensation scheme.
In addition, it would be right for the House to have a further opportunity to consider the compensation scheme in detail. That would be preferable to the blunt instrument that is the statutory instrument procedure, which allows hon. Members only to reject or accept a proposal. We must be able to ensure that fur farmers are treated generously and fairly.
Mr. Eric Forth (Bromley and Chislehurst): The abbreviated debate that has taken place thus far illustrates the extent of the problems that arose at the start of this saga--under the previous and the current Bill. It is becoming increasingly obvious that the crucial point on compensation--rightly, a constant theme--has still not been resolved. Despite the Minister's attempt to be helpful, I am not sure that we are much further on.
I regret not only the Bill itself and its whole basis, but the fact that we find ourselves in the rather demeaning position of discussing a group of people whose livelihood has been destroyed by statute and who are holding out a metaphorical begging bowl for taxpayers' money in compensation. That demeans them and, in a way, it demeans us as well. It raises the question--which I shall not pursue, because you would not permit me to do so, Mr. Deputy Speaker--of whether and when it is appropriate for those whose livelihoods are destroyed or affected by statute to be compensated by the taxpayer in some way. Clearly, the taxpayer would make such compensation, not the Government. The Government have no money; they have our money and they hand it out--usually in fairly ill-conceived ways. We should not forget that.
In effect the Minister is saying, "Trust me. The form of the compensation scheme has not been worked out yet; I am going to consult". "Consult" is a good word--one much used by Ministers these days. The Minister apparently intends to set up some expert body--I think he said "assessors". That makes my blood run cold. Whenever experts or assessors are involved, we can bet that there will be a mess. Those experts will talk to the potential recipients of the taxpayers' money, so I suppose that we--as the guardians of the taxpayer--are the only people who can make the other side of the argument.
I can see how the Minister will be involved; his experts and assessors will roam the country to talk to the people who are holding out a begging bowl. This debate is our only opportunity to make representations on behalf of the people whose money is to be handed out. We should not forget that there are two sides to the argument.
The Minister told us that the assessors will do their thing. Presumably, under the provisions of the Bill, the Government will then make an order to give effect to the details of the scheme. At that point, we surmise, it will come back to the House in the form of a statutory instrument, which of course--as usual--will not be amendable. In any case, the result of all the consultation of which the Minister is so proud will be worked up into a statutory instrument, as the Bill provides; and we shall then be asked to say yes or no to it.
Mr. Hogg: My understanding of the Bill--the Minister will correct me if I am wrong--is that the statutory instrument will be subject to the negative resolution procedure. That being so, it will not be the subject of an affirmative vote and will almost certainly not be debated by the House.
Mr. Forth: In my typically generous way, I was trying to give the Minister the benefit of the doubt. My right hon. and learned Friend, whose powers of analysis are legendary, has spotted the fact that there will be no affirmative vote, so I must withdraw my generosity. If the Minister confirms that my right hon. and learned Friend is correct, matters are worse than they seem. We really are no further forward.
Mr. Bercow: My right hon. Friend has not only been generous to the Government in public: in a conversation I held with him a few moments ago, he was generous about their intentions in private. I trust his experience of this place; he had surmised that the statutory instrument or order would be subject to the affirmative procedure. Does he agree that it is thoroughly unacceptable both that it will not be subject to that procedure and that the Government, in failing to tell us that important fact, are guilty of scurrilous sleight of hand?
Mr. Forth: I fear that is all too typical. My hon. Friend is a keen observer of these matters; he is aware that a parade of Ministers come to the Chamber to speak to us on various matters, giving us bland words and trying to be reassuring. However, we do not have to dig very deep to find that matters are not as they seem. The Minister has much explaining to do to satisfy Members in the Chamber at present, let alone those unfortunates whose livelihoods are about to be destroyed.
Clause 5 and the Lords amendments to it are, in many ways, the key to the Bill; that is why their lordships spent so much time on them. The amendments make an attempt,
do they not, to flesh out and make more satisfactory the definitions of income and non-income, which are at the heart of the compensation scheme? However, I am not sure that they take us much further forward. I recognise that the compensation will be subject to the assessors, the Minister and his officials, consultation and statutory instruments--all that--but before we finally approve the Bill, if we are minded to do so, incorporating the Lords amendments, we need to know what definition of "income" will be used.These days, "income" can mean, in a business context, gross or net income. It can mean the gross takings of an enterprise, or its profitable results before or after tax, or before or after deductions. Even that apparently simple word has many possible definitions. We need a much fuller explanation of its meaning here.
The Minister has said that he is not in a position to explain now, but while we are considering the Lords amendments, as against the original text of the Bill, we are entitled to pause and press the Minister to give us a clearer idea of the way in which he will guide the experts and assessors--which I assume he will want to do--before they go out and meet the unfortunates whose livelihoods are to be destroyed.
Mr. Forth: Oh, the Minister is going to be helpful now.
Mr. Morley: It may help if I explain to the right hon. Gentleman that the assessors will be independent assessors. They will not be Ministry officials or Ministry employees. They will conduct the assessment subject to the guidelines laid down by their professional association, which will probably be the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. There are very clear ways of assessing income and valuation on that basis, and it will be done in consultation with the farmers concerned. If farmers wish their own independent assessors to do the same and to discuss with the Ministry assessors, they are of course free to do so.
Mr. Forth: That is a very generous offer by the Minister--he is saying, "If you, whose livelihood is about to be destroyed, would like to spend even more of your money getting your experts to argue with the taxpayer- funded experts, you are free to do so". I am grateful to the Minister.
Mr. Hogg: My right hon. Friend might want to raise the point that the assessment will be done in accordance with the scheme, and the scheme is laid out by the Under-Secretary, and it can be as mean as he likes as long as it falls within the terms of the statute. That is why my amendments are so important.
Mr. Forth: Of course my right hon. and learned Friend's amendments are important; I accept that. I shall discuss the meanness in due course. I am only just warming up, as he knows, and there is a long way to go yet. As I was getting into my stride, I wanted to see whether I could tease the Minister into giving us an idea of his thinking on gross or net income. He has given us
no idea, because he has now said that the experts will go out armed with a scheme of some kind, the details of which we do not know but they may or may not know. Even so, and even given that the experts will talk to the unfortunate recipients of taxpayers' money, we have no idea whether the amount of compensation will be based on gross income to the enterprise as an income flow, or whether the experts will pay more attention to net income after expenses, tax and so on. That is rather important.When we come to the non-income assets and the compensation for them, we get into even deeper water. I am sure that some people outside this place believed that the compensation scheme would start from the premise that the non-income assets, buildings and particularly land, would be valued independently and expertly--a not unreasonable starting point.
Now the hon. Member for Liverpool, Garston (Maria Eagle) has brought strawberries into the argument--no doubt trying, in her usual way, to help. However, the strawberry argument is worrying. If the assessment is to take account not just of a valuation of the land, buildings, assets and so on, which we can all well understand, but of all possible alternative uses such as strawberries or otherwise, we are in deep water--if a strawberry can be in deep water. The matter is becoming increasingly complicated.
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