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Lord Razzall: Only from our side.
Lord Sharman: My Lords, I look forward to the Committee debates, which my noble friend Lord Razzall hopes will not be drawn out by experts. As one who thinks that he knows a little about some of these things, I promise not to do so.
6.31 p.m.
Lord Hunt of Wirral: My Lords, we have heard some valuable contributions in the 14 speeches so far. Substantial points have been raised that I trust the Minister will answer. I see that he is slowly going through the well written briefs that he has been given. I echo the tributes paid to his advisers. It is 23 years since I spoke from the Opposition Front Bench, but I had 16 years speaking from the Government Front Bench and I recall the outstandingly good briefs that I was given by the independent and impartial civil service of which we have every right to be proud. I am sure that some of the questions put by my noble friend Lady Miller of Hendon will be covered in the file that the Minister is going through carefully, but I anticipate that some of them will not be covered. I invite the Minister to break with tradition and give an off the cuff response to those penetrating questions.
Since I entered this House I have never ceased to be impressed by the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, and his mastery of so many varied briefs. He is a man of many public parts and roles, which he plays with great expertise. I pay tribute to him for that.
We have had an interesting debate about the title of the Bill. I applaud my noble friend Lord Boardman, who has consulted the Oxford English Dictionary, but I doubt that his suggestion will be taken up. He found a definition of enterprise as courage. During my period as a Minister, if any of my advisers said that a policy would be courageous or labelled any initiative as having considerable courage, it was often an argument for not going down that road.
Here we have a Bill covering now two volumes containing 277 clauses and 26 schedules. As my noble friend Lady Miller said, it is in effect three Bills. That was echoed by a number of speakers in the debate. I hope that Ministers recognise the call for the Bill to have undergone pre-legislative scrutiny. It was ideally suited for that process very well.
A number of points have been made about the timing of the Bill. Only the noble Lord, Lord Haskel, congratulated the Minister on the timing. He said that it was well timed because of all the financial scandals. I am not sure whether he attributes any credit to the Government for that timing, but I hope that he recognises that he was the only one who thought that July was the right moment to introduce the Bill in this House, leaving very little time for proper scrutiny.
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Razzall, that there has been inadequate consultation. The Bill has been rushed. I hope that we shall have time to scrutinise its provisions properly. As the CBI said, it is a curate's egg. The CBI has been quoted in support of the Bill, but it also said that it failed to see how the Bill could boost enterprise.
The Minister said that the Bill was radical, that there had been proper consultation and that the provisions were bold. I echo some of the comments of noble Lords who have called that into question. First, I commend again my noble friend Lord Boardman for his criticism of the prison sentences that have suddenly leapt to prominence for those guilty of anti-competitive behaviour. The recent Competition Act—some parts of which have not yet been brought into effect—did not suggest that penalty and the rest of Europe is moving in the opposite direction. Ministers need to explain why they are introducing these provisions.
My noble friend Lord Astor made a number of key points about the need to speed up procedures. In many ways, our system works well. My noble friend made some valuable points on that. He also asked, given that some of the provisions of the Competition Act have not yet come into effect, why the Government are proceeding in this direction. He carefully laid down a good argument for not doing so.
We have all without exception welcomed the fact that Ministers are moving to put distance between the Secretary of State and decisions on mergers. My noble friend Lord Tebbit produced guidelines heading in
that direction, so it is hardly surprising that we welcome this further step in relieving Ministers of the tendency to "block it, Beckett", or whoever the Minister might be pursuing a particular political course. It is very welcome that that will no longer be possible.One could have expected the noble Lord, Lord Borrie, to object to the abolition of the post that he held with such distinction for many years, reappointed constantly by Conservative governments. That may send a message to him—it certainly does to me.
My noble friend Lady Wilcox, however, supported the concept of the board. In Committee we must examine how it would work. The noble Lord was right to draw our attention to the advertisement that has just appeared. I have not yet scrutinised it, but I look forward to doing so. He said it spoke of two days a month, which hardly suggests the board will move at the speed with which the noble Lord used to move in his previous capacity.
I also support what the noble Lord, Lord Razzall, said about the Desmond clause and the question of public interest in mergers of newspapers. My noble friend Lady Miller of Hendon has already referred to this key issue.
Looking generally at the consumer side, the noble Lord, Lord Razzall, asked whether there should be a duty to trade fairly. I have heard from Deirdre Hutton of the National Consumer Council that we should consider whether there should be a duty not to trade unfairly. We share some of the Government's misgivings in trying to put that statement into legislation. It would be extremely difficult and would fall foul of some of the tests that my honourable friends have been imposing on the Bill to relieve regulation.
The speech of the noble Lord, Lord Phillips of Sudbury, bears considerable scrutiny. He has a lifetime of public service and is a lawyer well known for his initiatives on pro bono work. I recall that he was a legal eagle for some time. He pointed out some deficiencies of the existing free enterprise system which we should do well to consider carefully. Although I did not agree with much of what he said, we must ensure that we consider the issues with great care.
My noble friend Lady Wilcox talked about the difference between misdescribed services and misdescribed goods. I am not sure I agree with her, but it is necessary to scrutinise the guilty knowledge element in these matters. I would not want consumers to find that it is impossible for them to pursue redress. Equally, it is important to pay attention to the good faith of those selling services.
The noble Lord, Lord Brennan, referred to a number of key points, particularly on Clause 240, to which I had not paid much attention until he pointed out its deficiencies. I found persuasive some of the principles that he enunciated, but I will need to see how he translates his suggestions into specific amendments before deciding whether we agree with him.
The noble Lord, Lord Best, and the noble Baroness, Lady Maddock, shared with us their experience of social housing, although the Minister pointed out at the start of the debate that the Government will be tabling clauses to exclude housing associations.
I was amazed to hear the noble Lord, Lord Borrie, refer to the Bill as not being very fundamental, although wordy. I regard some of the measures as very fundamental and on this side of the House we will question their detail. He added that he would table a couple of proposed schedules and a series of clauses. We can only be taken aback by his courage and we look forward to scrutinising that additional proposed legislation.
On the provisions relating to insolvency, my noble friend Lord Hodgson rightly said that we must encourage risk takers. It will be important for us to try to find a way of differentiating between business debt and personal debt. My noble friend Lord Boardman was right to point out that borrowing has become a habit. It is a worrying development. We would not want any provisions in this legislation that suddenly released many people who often take credit beyond their means from the significance of facing up to that borrowing at some stage. We are often dealing with debts owed to small businesses in that respect.
I am not sure that we have paid enough attention to student debt. I was assured by a Minister that there was no need to worry about students seeking the new procedure to relieve themselves of student loans because the student loans legislation had already excluded such opportunities. I now discover that a further measure has put students back into potential bankruptcy proceedings. We need to think about that carefully. There have been a number of important press articles on the subject.
The Association of Business Recovery Professionals, which was referred to earlier, has highlighted the difference mentioned by several noble Lords between preserving the corporate vehicle as opposed to the economic entity. Schedule 16 states that,
- "The administrator of a company must perform his functions—
- (a) with the objective of rescuing the company".
As R3 points out, speed is virtually always critical to the rescue of a business, but so is flexibility. The unrealistic and arbitrary timescales imposed by the Bill to which the noble Lord, Lord Sharman, referred, will complicate the process and add to expense. With the changed definition of company rather than business the objectives may be defeated. We need to spend time on these points.
It has been an interesting debate. The House will have to spend a substantial amount of time in Committee. Clauses 205 to 228 were not considered by the other place in Committee. On Report, there was no
debate whatever on the provisions dealing with market investigations and cartels and only a short interrupted debate on mergers. It therefore falls to this House to spend considerable time on this important but complex Bill that will certainly need extensive scrutiny. As the noble Lord, Lord Sharman, said, the Government should not be misled by the general welcome in principle, because key areas of detail remain to be scrutinised. We await the Minister's response.6.47 p.m.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, I do not know whether I am more warned by the comment that the Government should not be misled by the general welcome or by the number of noble Lords who have said how much they look forward to Committee. Those seem to be threats rather than promises.
I begin with a certain amount of housekeeping, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Miller. She complained about some of the procedures, particularly the lack of consultation and the short time period for the final consultation. I hope that she will recognise that all the Bill's elements were subject to extensive consultation before the final consultation. In 1999 there was consultation in the consumer White Paper and on merger reform; in 2000 we consulted on personal bankruptcy; and last year we consulted on competition and insolvency. It has been a three-year process and there has been plenty of opportunity for people to comment, which has certainly been taken up.
In response to the comments on lack of scrutiny in the Commons, it is true that there has always been a limitation on the time allowed for scrutiny there. Whenever Bills have been guillotined in the past it has had the same effect as programming, but the division of time within the time allowed is a matter for the Opposition. If they choose not to debate certain matters, that is their responsibility, not the Government's.
If we agree to go into Committee, my understanding is that four days in Committee have been agreed. They may be long days; let us see. My experience has been—
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