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7 pm
My hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield (Mr. Fabricant) put up a robust performance in support of the new clause and amendments, explaining why it was important for us to emulate the American model. We hear from Labour Members that they have been converted to parts of American enterprise capitalism, but they still do not seem to understand that small businesses are flourishing in the United States of America because they are exempt from most of the regulation that Labour proposes to inflict on British business in this and related legislation.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Miss Kirkbride) made a strong case for businesses in her area, drawing on her constituency experience. My hon. Friend always puts the case for her local people with passion and skill. My hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale, West (Mr. Brady) explained how absurd it was for the Government to claim that they believed in deregulation, while introducing measure after measure that imposes cost after cost on business--which in turn creates job loss after job loss, as we see every day.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Fylde (Mr. Jack) said that the Secretary of State had been heckled at a recent small business conference. I am not surprised that he was heckled; it was entirely predictable. If he had listened to small businesses, as we have in recent months, he would know how angry they are about this legislation, and about all the legislation that has already been foisted on them by a Government who do not understand their requirements.
The Secretary of State tells us that he now knows that small business wants more deregulation. He has promised small firms a pow-wow--a conference with him, enabling them to explain the ways in which they want more deregulation. We have been telling the right hon. Gentleman for months that they want more deregulation, and tonight, we have offered him a chance to show how that can be done. We have tabled two new clauses. If he accepts them after this short debate--he can do so, even at the eleventh hour--he will show not only that he has begun to understand that business is cross, but that he wants to do something about it. He should be saying sorry for the regulations that he has introduced, and for those introduced by his two predecessors, the two previous Presidents of the Board of Trade--as they liked to be known. Instead, we see a Secretary of State who has learned nothing, and who wants to do nothing to help the business cause that he should be furthering.
Mr. Bercow:
Will my right hon. Friend reflect on the fact that, despite the Secretary of State's honeyed words
Mr. Redwood:
They will doubtless be as long or longer. The Secretary of State clearly finds that amusing. He should try responding to that degree of regulation while running a small enterprise with only a few staff, and trying to make ends meet under Labour's economic policies.
The Secretary of State does not seem to understand that the problems caused by high interest rates, high exchange rates and high taxes--all of which I mentioned in my opening remarks--are being greatly compounded by legislation such as this, which leaves business chronically short of the cash that it needs to employ people, to invest in the future and to modernise--something of which the present Government might be expected to approve. We have heard a series of cheap, juvenile debating points from the right hon. Gentleman, which we have heard many times before and to which we have responded adequately in the past. Yes, there were job losses and closures in 1992; but when will the Labour party apologise for supporting the policies that were being pursued then, and when will it learn from them? When will it understand that it is beginning to replicate exactly the conditions that obtained at that time? We have listened; we have learned; we know that the present position is wrong. Why cannot the Secretary of State appreciate the damage that his rerun is doing to industry in this country?
Mr. Ian Stewart:
It is a bit rich for the right hon. Gentleman to say that, given the inheritance left by his Government. One family in five in this country contains not one working person, and that does not include pensioners.
Mr. Redwood:
We left a golden economic legacy of falling unemployment, low inflation, growth and prosperity, and a flourishing small business enterprise culture. That is being destroyed by this Government--by their wanton economic policies, and by the regulation and laws that they are introducing.
The Secretary of State says that I should show a little less passion, but I will not. This matters. The Secretary of State should try listening. He should understand that many livelihoods are being destroyed by this Government's policies, and he should wake up and do something about it.
The Minister for Small Firms, Trade and Industry dared to smile when it was suggested that he should be worried about the shrinking of the small business sector as small businesses went under. He smiles again, in a rather lacklustre way. I assume that he is giggling now because he realises that the small business sector will not shrink. For every firm that goes under while this Government are in office, another medium-sized firm will shrink and replace it, becoming a new small firm. That is the Minister's small firms policy: if the medium-sized firms are damaged, he will have more candidates to preside over in his inimitable way.
The overwhelming weight of evidence from business organisations, Members of Parliament and constituents in businesses who lobby us points in the same direction. It suggests that small business must be exempted from these and any other regulations introduced by the Government. Does the Secretary of State understand that, if a firm with 21 employees which will be caught by the legislation in its present form needs one extra person to handle all the regulation and bureaucracy, that will constitute a 5 per cent. increase in its costs? For a firm with 1,000 employees, which may need only three extra people to handle the bureaucracy, the increase in costs will amount to only 0.3 per cent.--not welcome, but much less serious than the impact on the small firm. Is that fair? Does the Secretary of State wish to encumber small firms in such a way, allowing big firms a competitive advantage? That is one of our main reasons for proposing this important exemption.
An entrepreneur in a business with 20 or 30 employees may be the leader of a sales team. He may supervise production. He may be involved in design. He cannot take on more; yet the Secretary of State expects him to implement these measures, and supervise the company's response to a new range of statutory requirements.
The right hon. Gentleman asks whether my hon. Friends and I want people to be denied leave when their children are ill. Of course we do not--that is an outrageous suggestion--but in a small business, in which employer and employee have an individual relationship, such matters can be sorted out without the law intruding. The law is far too clumsy. Resort to lawyers will not help relationships in small firms; it will hinder them. It will generate another unnecessary cost for a small firm that may go under as a result, because the burdens will be far too great.
It is not good enough for the Secretary of State to promise some new review of the regulatory burdens that he and his predecessors have introduced. It is not good enough for him to blame past Governments. The burden is much greater now, the protest is much stronger now, and the small business community is much angrier now, because of the huge burdens imposed by taxes and regulations under the present Government. They are throwing away our golden economic legacy. They are making it too dear to make things in Britain.
Labour is undoubtedly bad for business. If this Secretary of State wants to do some deregulating, he should start now by instructing his team of Members to back our new clauses.
Question put, That the clause be read a Second time:--
The House divided: Ayes 131, Noes 348.
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