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Another issue that we have not heard much about, but that ought to go on to the Minister’s agenda, is leasing. Despite Government’s initiatives and support for UK banks, there continues to be a sharp decline in the liquidity needed to enable small and medium-sized enterprises to lease essential business assets, such as telecoms and data services equipment. Demand from
the SMEs continues at last year’s levels, but the almost complete withdrawal of UK banks from funding smaller businesses on normal terms, if at all, means that specialist leasing companies have to rely on foreign banks and to take more risk on their own books, and they cannot afford to do that for much longer. That reduces the number of SMEs able to access affordable leasing arrangements. There will be serious consequences for SMEs if we cannot give them the quality systems and technology that they need to develop their businesses. Leasing, sometimes of quite small items of kit, is hugely important in the SME sector, but the money is not available to finance it. I hope the Minister will be prepared to look into that with representatives of the leasing sector.
Mr. Adrian Bailey (West Bromwich, West) (Lab/Co-op): The hon. Gentleman is the Chairman of the Select Committee on which I sit and I have listened to his list of issues affecting small businesses. As a representative of a constituency with an enormous number of small manufacturing businesses, I recognise some of the problems that he has outlined. Does he agree that where there are problems with the schemes that the Government have introduced and that do not seem to be getting through to the businesses, the local chambers of commerce and the regional development agencies will have a crucial role to play in bringing the finance sector and the local manufacturing companies together to ensure that those schemes get through?
Peter Luff: Some schemes have been put in place, but people are not being told accurately and in detail what is involved. Other schemes are not yet in place and ought to be. Yet other schemes are hinted at but are not yet offered, even in broad terms. Those are three separate problems, but I agree that the RDAs have an important role to play.
I regret the moving of Business Link from my Hereford and Worcester chamber of commerce to the regional development agency. It was a very well run Business Link which had strong links with the local community. It is now more remote, so communication is sometimes a more difficult challenge in my area. That situation differs in different parts of the country and even in our shared region. I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s thoughtful contribution.
Leasing is important to the automotive sector. That leads me on quickly to a discussion of one of the topics in the estimates—the package of loan guarantees to automotive manufacturers. I am worried about the lack of attention to the supply chain and small suppliers. We know how important that is. I have at least one automotive supplier—I am not prepared to name him in the House—in desperate difficulty with his bank, for no good reason. He desperately needs access to finance and cannot get it. We need to look much more than we have at the supply chain in the automotive sector.
I welcome, I think, what the Government have done for the automotive sector, as does the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders. However, we still have to be clear in our own minds about the basis for supporting the automotive sector as opposed to any other sector. We must not allow dangerous precedents to be set; the Government cannot support every sector.
Andrew Miller (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab) rose—
Peter Luff (Mid-Worcestershire) (Con): I see that the hon. Gentleman wants to intervene; I think that he will have particular views about the automotive sector.
Andrew Miller: I am surprised at the lack of consistency among those on the Conservative Benches. I welcome the comments that the Chairman of the Select Committee has just made; it is a pity, however, that the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke), who went uninvited to Vauxhall last week, did not say the same thing. He was still trying to talk down the business.
Peter Luff: If my right hon. and learned Friend were here, he would be able to answer for himself; I think that he will be here a little later. I do not know what he said, but I had a discussion with him last week about the merits of scrappage allowances, for example. The Government have been slow to move on that issue, and that concerns the SMMT. There may be a case for scrappage allowances, although it may be weaker here than in Germany or France. The Government are talking about the issue, but nothing has happened.
The SMMT shares my concern about the failure to develop a proper package of support for the automotive finance houses. That is crucial. I know people—perfectly sound risks—who want to buy cars, but cannot get the finance to do so. Again, the Government have been promising action on finance, but it has not been taken. That is another example of an idea being talked about that needs to be brought forward.
The SMMT would also like Government support for short-time working, which might help in the constituency of the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston; I do not know. Lord Jones of Birmingham has put that interesting idea forward, and it involves a shared package of employees taking less money, employers making a contribution and the Government helping to subsidise part-time working, so that the companies do not lose the skills that they will need again when the recession ends. The chambers of commerce share that view and such a scheme was in place from April 1979 to March 1984; there is a precedent. Other European countries are introducing such schemes, and I hope that the Minister will say that the issue is being considered with some urgency—and, if it is not a runner, that it is being dismissed. We need clarity about the Government’s intentions.
The Government will have to move more swiftly than they have until now, and pick the big issues to address. They need to promise to do less, but do it better and more quickly. I am not talking about doing nothing; we all agree that action is needed. However, the Government must make sure that what they do is done with care and speed, and that they then explain themselves clearly to the House of Commons.
That leads me to my final points, which are about the accountability of the Department to the House. I am still proud to be a Member of the House and I want to reinforce its position in society. We should be debating great issues not only in television studios and on the “Today” programme, but here in the House. Today’s debate is an estimates day debate, one of the most important things that the House of Commons does.
By the way, it is worth pointing out that only the decision of the Liaison Committee to hold this debate fleshed out the fact that the Department had failed to
provide the customary written statement on the estimates. That was a regrettable oversight. For reasons that I shall explain a little later, it is really important that the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, above all others, fulfils all its obligations to the Commons to the letter—that includes replying to letters more speedily than it sometimes does and not transferring to other Departments letters to which it should reply. The Department has to treat the House of Commons with the utmost care at present because of the relative paucity of its representatives on House of Commons Benches.
I am still surprised by the introduction of the Industry and Exports (Financial Support) Bill, a hugely important Bill, without any explanation or statement. I have had no letter about it and have seen no written statement about it—it was just suddenly published. I am likely to support it, although I have not seen a detailed debate on it yet. It is a really important measure, and it would be good to see the Government explaining themselves rather more clearly about such important steps.
We have the power to grant money. That is what we are doing today; later this evening, we are voting on millions of pounds. The Government rely on the Commons to approve the estimates. Today, we are debating requests for money, including potentially significant liabilities for business and the automotive sector. But the Secretary of State cannot come here to explain his policies and the Minister with responsibility for small businesses cannot come here to explain hers. Furthermore, neither the Minister for Trade and Investment nor the Under-Secretary of State responsible for communications, technology and broadcasting can come here and explain their policies. They are all in the Lords, although I know that the hon. Member for Dudley, South (Ian Pearson) has a lot of sectoral responsibility, which is welcome.
I do not know what this Government would have done without the ability to create life peers in the House of Lords. We have had five life peers at the Department in my short time chairing the Select Committee. One roared briefly and gloriously across the parliamentary sky—Digby, Lord Jones of Birmingham—but he was not a real Minister. He was never a member of the Labour party, and he had no policy responsibility and not much collective responsibility, but he was a very good salesman for UK plc: an important job well done, all too briefly, but not a ministerial one. However, he gave the Prime Minister some help in his early days, and I suppose we must thank Digby for that. To be fair, Digby, Lord Jones, has a quality shared with the other four life peers now serving in the Department—real ability.
Why alone among Government Departments is this Department unable to find enough talent from this House to take the most important decisions that we face as a nation? We have just three Ministers in the Commons, two of whom are here today. They are the two—I do not say this pejoratively—part-time Ministers, one shared, in the case of the Minister for Trade, Development and Consumer Affairs, with the Department for International Development, and the other with the Treasury. Only the Minister for Employment Relations and Postal Affairs dedicates himself full time to the
Department and this place. They are all able and decent Ministers; I can say that genuinely. I like them, get on very well with them personally, and respect them—but they do not have Cabinet rank, and they do not have enough time to do justice to their portfolios or to make themselves properly responsible to this House. This is not an arcane constitutional issue. Our constituents must have confidence that we can raise on their behalf the most pressing issues of the time with the Ministers who are taking the decisions on those issues.
BERR now even has a YouTube presence—I went on it at the weekend. People can ask Lord Mandelson a question, and the most popular one will get a video response. I have asked a question, although I do not know if it is popular. There are some very good questions on it. When last I looked, there were 38 questions and no responses. However, in the House of Commons itself only members of the Select Committee—there are many here today—have the privilege of being able to ask Lord Mandelson questions on the record. We read about the consequences in last week’s edition of The Sunday Times, where we were told, of the controversial proposals to part-privatise Royal Mail Group:
“Several government aides have joined the Labour rebellion, piqued by the role played by the divisive Mandelson. ‘Because Peter Mandelson is in the Lords, I have to make do with asking him questions in corridors’, said Geraldine Smith, the Labour MP leading the rebels. ‘I asked him, ‘How much do you expect to get?’ and he said, ‘I haven’t got a figure.’ No one has any money right now.’”
That is a rather important question for this House to ask, but we cannot do so. Lord Mandelson’s speeches are always reported. They are very well written, although I am not sure that they are always as radically new as he thinks—“industrial activism” sounds remarkably like the policy of successive Governments since the war. They are always worth asking about, but we cannot ask him on the record. I can, and the other members of the Committee can, but none of the rest of us can, and we should be able to.
This is not just about scrutiny but legislation. The Commons will be asked to legislate without access to the head of the Department. Will junior Ministers really have the power during those debates to make the concessions that this House needs? When the Postal Services Bill comes here after Easter, that will become a very important question. Indeed, we have the curious spectacle of a major Bill that will spend large amounts of money to address a massive pension deficit and breaks the spirit, if not the letter, of a manifesto commitment, beginning its life in the Lords—its Second Reading is tomorrow—simply because the Minister with prime responsibility for it is a Member of the House of Lords. There should be a Commons Cabinet Minister in this House and the Bill should begin here.
Mr. Tom Clarke (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (Lab):
The hon. Gentleman does a fine job chairing his Committee. Does he recall that Lord Home was Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in Harold Macmillan’s Government, and that even more recently Baroness Chalker headed the International Development Department from the House of Lords, and we had 10 minutes for a junior Minister, Lennox-Boyd, to deal with all the big issues here? I share the hon. Gentleman’s confidence in my hon. Friend the Minister for Trade, Development and Consumer Affairs. When Ted Heath
stood in for Lord Home, he was clearly on the ladder to becoming Prime Minister, so I am expecting great things.
Peter Luff: The right hon. Gentleman tempts me to recite the Committee’s 14th report, which I recommend to him. There is a particularly good footnote about Lord Wellington appearing before the Bar of the House of Commons. I think that there was only one occasion of substance in recent history when there was a Minister in the Lords without a Cabinet Minister to match him here in the Commons—Lord Cockfield, from 1982 to 1983. As far as I recall, Baroness Chalker was not in the Cabinet at the time and was only a Minister of State; her post did not involve a separate Government Department. That was a mistake then, and it is a mistake now.
In our 14th report, we said that
“it would be possible to follow earlier precedents and ensure that a Cabinet Minister in the Commons is able to answer on behalf of the Department”.
We discussed accountability with Lord Mandelson and he suggested
“you alter the Standing Orders of the House of Commons to allow Lords heads of department to come and answer questions in the Commons”,
“way beyond my comfort zone”.
We thought that that was an idea worth exploring and we looked at some ways of doing it. In view of the time, I will not labour the point, but we said that detailed discussion about a mechanism was probably best left to the Procedure Committee. We were
“convinced such a mechanism is needed, particularly at a time of such economic turmoil”,
but we were comprehensively rebuffed by the Government in their response, Command Paper 7559:
“The Government is content that the current arrangements provide for rigorous scrutiny in both Houses of the work of the Department. The Secretary of State has indicated that he is keen for the Business and Enterprise Committee to act as the principal conduit of his accountability to the Commons and he is happy to discuss further with the Committee how that role might be developed.”
“the Secretary of State has already appeared twice in front of the Committee”.
Yes, he has, and we welcome his preparedness to come before us. It is always entertaining, and often illuminating when he does, and we are grateful for that, but we have not got the time to spend our entire lives asking House of Lords Ministers to come before us to be accountable to Parliament, when they should do so in this House. We cannot do that, and to do so would not be an adequate replacement for making them accountable here.
“Ministers have a duty to Parliament to account, and to be held to account, for the policies, decisions and actions of their departments and agencies. They do this in a number of ways. In the House in which they sit, Ministers answer questions, make statements and participate in debates.”
I apologise to the Ministers on the Front Bench, but the four most important Ministers in the Department do not sit here. They sit in the other place, and that is the problem. I am sorry if that hurts, but they are the four
most important Ministers taking the most important decisions, and we cannot question them.
One of the most extraordinary claims in the Government’s response was this:
“A Minister who is a Member of the House of Lords may make a statement to a grand committee of the House of Commons and answer questions on it.”
There are only three Grand Committees—for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland—and I am advised by the Journal Office that so far during this Parliament, only the Welsh Grand Committee has met, and it has only met twice. The Scottish Grand Committee has not met since 2003. This idea of Grand Committees as a mechanism, even if we got the English regional Grand Committees, is not a good one because we want the whole House to be involved in this process. Allowing regional Grand Committees to call Ministers is not a substitute for the democracy of this House.
Another point raised by the Government, which we were just discussing, was this:
“There have always been Cabinet Ministers in the House of Lords...The Government does not believe that the current situation is any different in principle from any of these other recent examples.”
I just do not accept that; it is factually wrong. This situation is different by an order of magnitude. For a start, this is a time of economic crisis, and the decisions being taken by these Ministers are hugely important. When I was a special adviser at the old Department of Trade and Industry and Lord Young of Graffham was Secretary of State, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke) was a Cabinet Minister, sitting here and answering questions. We should have something similar now. Actually, it would be good to have my right hon. and learned Friend in the Department again, and sitting round the Cabinet table, not just the shadow Cabinet table. But that is a partisan point, and Select Committee Chairmen must not make those. It would be good to have a Cabinet-ranking Minister in this House at this important time.
“There is also a risk that the burden on Ministers of having additional duties in the other House might compromise their ability to participate fully in the work of the House in which they sit.”
Almost all Ministers in the Department have other responsibilities in other Departments—only two out of a team of seven do not fall into this category. That is all right, then: Ministers can have those conflicting responsibilities, but they cannot make themselves accountable to this House. That is a great shame.
I have spoken for far longer than I meant to. It is an unusual opportunity, and this is a series of important questions that the Department needs to answer. It is doing better, but it needs to up its game. It must deliver on what it promises, and promise the right things, and it must improve its accountability to this House. I do not regard the Government’s response to our 14th report as anything other than a severe disappointment.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Michael Lord): May I remind the House that there is a 15-minute limit on Back-Bench speeches?
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