Hospitality Industry

Lord Addington Excerpts

Tuesday 24th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I am not sure that I would equate the two issues, but I am happy to debate this with the noble Lord some other time. There are some labour shortages in the hospitality sector, as there are in others. We want to get the message across that industry needs to invest in workers from this country, rather than relying just on immigration all the time.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, following up on that last question, would the Minister like to decide in the short term where he will get his workers from? If the industry contracts, there will be nowhere for them to go and we will all lose. Could he comment on that?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

It is not necessarily the case that the industry is contracting: this year, revenues were ahead of where they were before the pandemic. There are some businesses closing and others are opening, and employment is up since before the pandemic.

Employers: Fire and Rehire

Lord Addington Excerpts

Thursday 3rd November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I am sure the noble Lord will not be surprised to know that we will not be supporting his Private Member’s Bill. Let me say that dismissal and re-engagement should only be considered as an absolute last resort if changes to employment contracts are critical and voluntary agreement is not possible. We do not want to encourage the practice but do not think that banning it would be right because, in some limited circumstances, it is the only way to save businesses and protect the jobs within them.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, will the Minister give us an assurance that any firm using this practice inappropriately will lose any government contracts? That would be a very clear indicator that the Government disapprove.

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

We do disapprove of these practices, which is why, as I said to the noble Lord, Lord Woodley, we are producing a statutory code and will consult on it shortly.

Low-Income Families: Energy Cost Support

Lord Addington Excerpts

Tuesday 6th September 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

My noble friend makes powerful points on both the issues that he raises. Of course, we should be proud of our record in taking the lowest paid out of income tax altogether, but I am sure that the new PM will want to bear my noble friend’s words in mind.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, if we are going to give these assistance packages, would it not be a good idea to have a document that clearly states the Government’s thinking and what will be sacrificed? If we get it wrong, we will end up paying for this primarily in the health service.

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I am not quite sure that I understand the noble Lord’s point. Of course, all of the appropriate documentation would be produced. With a lot of these schemes, it is easy to bandy around large numbers, as we have seen recently, but they take a lot of time to implement. Officials in my department have been working solidly over the summer to implement the last package of announcements—the Energy Bills Support Scheme—which is why it is now ready to go, from the first of next month. A considerable amount of very swift work would be required to implement a new package as well.

European Union Touring Visas

Lord Addington Excerpts

Tuesday 14th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I am afraid that the noble Baroness is simply wrong in the first part of her question. We tried to negotiate an ambitious deal on recognition of different qualifications and movement with the European Union, and it rejected our proposals. On the second part of her question, I agree with her and we will now try to work with all the associations and individuals to improve the situation.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, it is clear that the Government have actually added bureaucracy for anybody who is taking a small band across Europe, for example, and wants to play in more than three or four countries. Given that, will the Government give some form of assistance to ensure that people have enough clerical support and knowledge to actually fill in all the forms they are now presented with?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

We are attempting to provide as much clarity as possible. It is difficult because, of course, the regimes are different in every member state. They have different immigration regimes and different enforcement regimes, but we are endeavouring to provide as much clarity as possible and we are publishing that information on GOV.UK.

Covid-19: Financial Support for High Street Retailers

Lord Addington Excerpts

Tuesday 27th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

As the noble Lord will be aware, the retail, hospitality and leisure sectors have been helped considerably. We allocated £12.3 billion to local authorities in England to pay grants to businesses under the small business grants fund. This support will continue and we need to do all we can to help our high streets.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, will the Minister have a look at the fate of charity shops on the high street, which fill up a great deal of it? They provide a large part of the income of many charities and are having their services called on very heavily at the moment. Can we do something to help them particularly? They have lost a lot of money and we need their services.

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

The noble Lord makes a powerful point. We are providing an unprecedented package of support worth £750 million to allow charities and social enterprises to continue their vital work but, of course, we accept that we are not able to replace every pound that they have lost.

Covid-19: Businesses and the Private Sector

Lord Addington Excerpts

Thursday 21st May 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, in listening to this debate, I find that two things occur to me. One is that the mixed economy really does not have any opponents here; the only thing we are arguing about is the level of the mix. The private sector holds some of the answers, but certainly not all. Remembering that the Government set the terms of market—that is, trading—and what is possible and desirable, we must never take our eye off the interaction. That brings me to the question that I want to talk about: what will happen in the new job market to those with disabilities?

There has been a huge drive to get everybody who has a disability into work. I refer the House to my registered interests, both paid and in the voluntary sector. How will we help? I have seen, in over 30 years as a Member of this House, the peaks when everybody was to be employed and we were short of labour, and the economic downturns when suddenly this group is squeezed. A group that needs adjustment, even if it is comparatively easily done, will always be slightly less attractive to employers than those who do not. Those who have problems that develop at work will always be that much more vulnerable or feel that they should not ask for the help that they are entitled to when the job market suddenly becomes tighter. Can the Government give some assurance that all employers will be reminded of their legal duties and moral responsibilities to these groups? Normally, they are workers who stay in their jobs, do not change and, indeed, perhaps oddly, do not take sick leave. Can the Government assure us that they will maintain this level of support in the future?

Horizon Accounting System

Lord Addington Excerpts

Wednesday 25th March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan]

On the noble Lord’s last point, I believe it was published this morning and is on GOV.UK; I will send him a link so that he can access that. With regard to the review, I am afraid I cannot yet give him a time on that. We are looking for an independent chair at the moment and finalising the terms of the inquiry. I will let him have more information as soon as I have it.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, probably one of the most shocking things is the amount of damage done to individual lives, made more so by the Post Office’s refusal to admit even the possibility that something had gone wrong. Can we give general guidance about when an institution should start to think, “Have we done something wrong with what we have put in place?” How will that be institutionalised or made a fundamental part of all management structures in future? That is probably the worst bit of this entire process.

[Lord Callanan]

The noble Lord makes a very good point. Everybody can make mistakes—we have to accept that things go wrong—but the refusal to admit that a mistake had been made and the dogged determination over many years, pursuing individuals who in retrospect had done nothing wrong, is one of the most disgraceful aspects of this affair. I am confident that the new management of the Post Office has learned the lessons—the hard way. How we reflect that in other management structures is something that all organisations should look at.

Industrial Strategy

Lord Addington Excerpts

Monday 8th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, when you speak in a debate such as this it is quite odd to discover that you want to take a slight deviation in approach. So far all the speeches have, understandably, concentrated on the macro situation—the broader picture. In doing so they have covered the variety of subjects in the strategy’s structure. I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Maude, who suggested that it is a compendium of policies brought together. I will focus on the second—people—and on one specific area.

I have for many years—I thought about it and discovered that it has been over four Parliaments and three Governments—been talking about the role of apprenticeships and how they are, or are not, allowing those with certain disabilities to take advantage of them. This an appropriate point to remind the House of my declared interests, particularly in dyslexia and assisted technology. We have moved on from a situation where you had to pass an English test to get into the apprenticeship system, which I think the noble Lord, Lord Nash, eventually dealt with by saying that it was ridiculous to have this for somebody who was dyslexic or had one of the other hidden conditions. It means that you have problems with writing, or indeed doing an online test. Therefore, a change was made.

We have now moved on to doing something that is equally stupid. Indeed, the cock-up school of history seems to have come back to us in apprenticeships. In a component part of skilling up people’s skill set, we have found yet another little example of where, if you take your eye off the minutiae of what is going on, you will make a change. We have said that we will help only those with an education, health and care plan. For those who have not been immersed in the education system for quite as long as I have, the education, health and care plan identifies that you have a disability at a fairly high level. The problem is that it is at a fairly high level. Just under 3% of the school population are recognised as having this. Some 12% are regarded as having a disability. We have a nine percentage-point gap of people who may have problems that may mean they cannot access the written word very well.

In the modern world there is no reason why that should block you, for the simple reason that voice technology is now so common. Voice-to-text or voice-to-voice technology for taking and passing assessments is incredibly common. It is old technology. Dyslexics going through the education system would probably have been the first big group to use it. I have been using it for nearly 20 years. It was introduced to me by the computer department of the House of Lords, when we still had one. I met a group of RAF pilots for whom it was developed because they had run out of fingers when flying jets. It is a very practical form of technology. But if we help only the group with the highest level of identification, all those in the other group will not get the support they need to get a qualification.

We have moved to a world where we need qualified people and we expect to have them organised and structured. If we put artificial barriers in place, such as having to pass an English test if you have been identified as having a disability, while not allowing people to take it in the way they will probably access it in their lives, when you can write a note to somebody that appears on a screen by talking to a computer—every single computer has that capacity; your phone has that capacity—we are excluding a block of people from higher levels of training. I ask the Minister to go back and make sure that those in the skills sector start to address these problems correctly and deal with the absurdity of taking a group away and saying, “No, we’ll restrict our skills base; we’ll restrict your earning power and leave you there”.

This is a good example of one of the problems we have. When we looked at the Government’s recent Statement about health and disability, it became quite clear that they had not taken on board people in jobs who are often unidentified as having a disability. I cited that 12% figure. Everything shows that many people have been unidentified in the past and currently, particularly at the edges, those who are struggling or underachieving do not expand their jobs or take on further qualifications. When we try to get the best out of our workforce, can we make sure that we start to identify these groups and help get qualifications for them through?

It is often said that to be a successful disabled person in our society, you need one fundamental bit of luck and that is your parents. The “tiger” parent is the person who has that plan, the person who has the identification that allows you to go forward. I have not even talked about the university sector, where exactly the same principle applies. The problem is that many people in the apprenticeship sector are late-diagnosis or undiagnosed. Those training them are still undertrained. However, we have a far greater incentive to make sure that we find and identify these groups if we can get them through the qualifications—if there was incentive in the institutions they are in to identify them, train them and get them through. If the Government insist on setting such an incredibly high barrier for giving help, they will exclude most of the people who have been identified as needing it. They would be helping those who have the greatest problems in later life and not those who would probably succeed with a smaller degree of intervention. Even if we regard people only as economic units, it is idiocy. Will the Government make sure that the appropriate levels of support are available, meaning that you will be able to access the structure and with easier transfer of information and data analysis between bodies? If we do not do that, we will create a block and a drag factor on any structure and any plan for industrial development. Unless we can bring this group into the trained world and world of work generally at a high enough level, we will always have those who slow us down. It is not very difficult. I am talking only about using information that is already out there and the existing structure, and about the existing pattern of development whereby we are told, “You will now talk to your computer as opposed to tapping the keyboard”.

Can we please have some more development here and some indication that the Government are looking at how those in the disabilities sector will be helped and supported to make them productive members of society? I have not many met of them who do not want to join that group.

Waterson Review

Lord Addington Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd November 2016 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Addington]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government when their response to the Waterson review of secondary ticketing will be published.

[The Minister of State, Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Baroness Neville-Rolfe) (Con)]

Professor Michael Waterson’s independent report on consumer protection measures applying to online secondary ticketing makes a number of recommendations which deserve to be fully considered by all those concerned with ticketing, live entertainment and law enforcement. The new Government are taking time to look very closely at the recommendations and will publish a response in due course.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

I thank the Minister for that response. What would be her response to somebody who discovers that they have purchased the wrong ticket, when the Government have yet to implement the Act in question?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

The Act has of course come into force and there have been prosecutions on ticketing, although they are often made through fraud law rather than consumer law. The advice I would give to consumers is to get in touch with the excellent Citizens Advice service. If they have evidence of fraud they should contact Action Fraud, and there is also the possibility of trading standards taking action. One of Professor Waterson’s recommendations is that more work should be done on that.