Enterprise Bill [Lords]

Eleanor Laing Excerpts

Tuesday 8th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Brennan]

I beg to move, That the schedule be read a Second time.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Amendment 18, in clause 41, page 56, line 18, at end insert—

“(1A) The restriction placed on public sector exit payments must be reviewed at regular intervals and, where necessary, be adjusted in line with inflation and earnings growth.”.

This amendment would ensure that the level that the restriction on public sector exit payments is set will be linked to inflation and earnings growth.

Amendment 15, page 57, line 10, at end insert

“, including payments relating to employees earning less than £27,000 per year”.

This amendment would provide that regulations may exempt from the public sector exit payment cap those earning less than £27,000.

Amendment 16, page 57, line 27, at end insert—

“(10A) Nothing in this section applies in relation to payments made by the bodies listed in NS1.”.

This amendment would exclude employees of companies listed in NS1 operated by the private sector from the scope of the proposed cap on exit payments.

Government amendments 3 to 9.

[Kevin Brennan]

I am happy to confirm that the Opposition will be supporting amendment 18, tabled by the Scottish National party, which we discussed in Committee.

This is the bit of the Enterprise Bill that has nothing to do with enterprise; it is largely about spin, to be perfectly honest. Let me make it clear, as I did in Committee, that Her Majesty’s official Opposition agree that excessive exit payments in the public sector should not be paid, and that any abuses in that regard should be ended. The problem with the Government’s approach is that they are attempting to govern by headline in a very complex area, and in so doing they are creating the sorts of anomalies and unfairnesses that I am sure we will hear about during this debate. Including a headline-grabbing figure—in this case £95,000—on the face of the Bill is, frankly, the worst kind of utterly vacuous government, and it is exactly the sort of rigid legislating that good civil servants advise against, and that bad Ministers promote.

The inclusion of that figure in the Bill is really about allowing the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills to have his tabloid headline about fat cats, which was one of the odious remarks he made on Second Reading. That was an insult to thousands of decent, hard-working people across this country, many of whom have never been paid anywhere near £30,000 a year, let alone the £3 million a year that the Secretary of State used to get when he worked for an investment bank. [Interruption.] That has a lot to do with it, because of the language he used.

If I was to accuse the Secretary of State of being a fat cat—I am not going to do that, Madam Deputy Speaker—the Minister would be huffing and puffing in her usual way, muttering “Outrageous” and “Disgraceful” from a sedentary position. She and the Secretary of State like to dish it out, but they do not like to take it when it comes back their way. She was quite content to sit there on Second Reading and cheer the Secretary of State on as he traduced public servants, including long-serving local librarians and even privatised nuclear decommissioning workers, and described them as fat cats. I wonder how they felt about the Secretary of State using that language. Actually, I know exactly how they felt, because they wrote to us in their droves to express their anger at his insulting rhetoric, and that evidence—there was a lot of it—was officially submitted to the Committee.

Amendment 15, tabled by the Opposition, seeks to protect those workers who earn less than £27,000 a year from the proposed exit payments cap—yes, those who earn less than £27,000 a year are the Secretary of State’s so-called fat cats.