Kate Green
Main Page: Kate Green (Labour - Stretford and Urmston)
Vince Cable
That is going rather further than I would want to go with the argument or the evidence.
Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)
The Bill does not contain measures on some of the matters on which the Government are consulting in respect of employment law, following the red tape challenge. Does the Secretary of State intend to bring forward more proposals during the passage of the Bill—in relation, for example, to employer liability for third-party harassment, to the ability of an employment tribunal to make a decision that will then apply to all staff, or to the statutory questionnaire?
Vince Cable
I have no such proposals. There is nothing stopping the hon. Lady proposing amendments for us to consider.
Vince Cable
I am not going to give the hon. Gentleman a very precise answer because I will need to check on the exact legal position. I am aware of the concerns, and he is one of several people who have expressed them. I will endeavour to reply to him in writing to give him the precise answer to his question.
A further set of reforms accelerates the Government’s drive to tear up unnecessary red tape. We inherited over 20,000 separate rules and regulations affecting business in the UK. Cumulatively, this regulation stifles growth and strangles innovation, and in the past two years we have launched a concerted drive to tackle the problem. We introduced the one in, one out rule to stem the flow of regulation to business. The aim of one in, one out is not only to force regulating Departments to deregulate more but to change the Whitehall culture to encourage Departments to use regulation only as a last resort. Under the red tape challenge, 20 regulatory themes have been launched for comment on the website, involving more than 3,700 regulations. Decisions have been announced by Ministers on 1,500 of those, of which well over 50% will be scrapped or improved.
Kate Green
How will the provisions of clause 51 on repealing some of the provisions of the Equality Act 2010 in relation to the general duty and the good relations duty have any impact on business whatsoever?
Vince Cable
I was going to mention that measure at the end of my speech. We see it essentially as a bit of legislative tidying up; we are not going to argue that it has significant impacts on business. However, we can pursue the detailed implications.
The Bill introduces further measures and makes it possible to include a sunset or review clause in any new secondary legislation to ensure that legislation is fit for purpose and is regularly reviewed. It also extends business eligibility for the highly successful primary authority scheme, which allows firms to get assured advice from one local authority on a particular regulatory issue. Often what businesses find most bewildering is not the regulation itself—they recognise that rules are often necessary—but the inconsistent application of the rules so that they have to adjust their systems depending on the whim of a local official. The primary authority scheme deals with that.
Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)
Clause 51 seeks to repeal a number of provisions in the Equality Act 2006. I am puzzled by the clause, because most of the provisions that it seeks to repeal have nothing to do with the regulatory burden on business. As was pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Sandra Osborne), in repealing the good relations and general duty provisions that currently apply to the Commission for Equality and Human Rights, we will make no difference to business directly, but will change the context and undermine the equalities philosophy which I believe is important for a successful economic recovery. I shall say more about that in a moment.
Elsewhere, through changes in regulations, the Government are directly attacking some of the principles that protect employees and guarantee labour market equality. They are consulting on proposals that have resulted from the red tape challenge: proposals to remove employer responsibility for third-party harassment, to ensure that decisions by employment tribunals will no longer apply to all employees, and to remove the use of the statutory questionnaire. When I asked the Secretary of State about those proposals earlier this evening, he seemed to say categorically that none of them would appear in the Bill. We will hold him to that, because watering down equalities legislation is certainly not a recipe for economic growth. On the contrary, labour market justice and fair access for all to employment opportunities are a prerequisite, not a problem, for economic success. An unequal recovery which fails to make the most of everyone’s talents and take steps that encourage and support employee loyalty, and which therefore fails to stimulate productivity, is no recovery at all.
I am sorry that the Government have missed an opportunity to link—proactively, ambitiously and imaginatively—labour market justice with economic success in an explicit way. The Bill could have included measures to improve employment opportunity and labour market justice. Measures that tackle occupational segregation and introduce the anonymising of application processes have been shown to improve access to the labour market, yet there is no sign of any such provisions. The Government also have a social mobility strategy that they are supposed to be promoting, but that, too, is in no way reflected here, or even mentioned.
The Bill presents an opportunity to create the conditions for an equal, not an unequal, recovery—a recovery that promotes, supports and makes use of the talents and contributions of all. I regret that the Secretary of State has thus far failed to take that opportunity, but he still has time to correct the omission. I say to the Government that if Ministers do not bring forward amendments to create the genuine conditions for economic recovery and equal opportunity in the labour market during the passage of the Bill, we most certainly will.