The comments made by Emma Hardy, the Shadow Universities Minister, on 2 December 2020.
The Government has finally listened to Labour’s call to set out a plan for the safe return of students to university in January. However, the delay in providing this guidance has caused huge, unnecessary stress for students and universities.
Ministers must now work with universities to ensure a staggered return works for all students, and universities receive the tests and support they need.
The comments made by James Murray, the Shadow Financial Secretary to the Treasury, on 2 November 2020.
The Government promised to crack down on promoters of tax avoidance this year – but now all their pledges have been dropped from 2020, with no guarantee of when we’ll see them return.
It’s irresponsible for the Government to keep dragging its feet on such a key issue. Everyone should play by the rules and pay their fair share of tax. The fact this Chancellor is pushing ahead with a key worker pay freeze while going soft on tax avoidance makes you wonder about his priorities.
The comments made by Kate Green, the Shadow Secretary of State for Education, on 3 December 2020.
The government have finally listened to calls from Labour, pupils, parents, and school leaders and set out a plan for exams, but they have been far too slow to act. This plan should have been in place months ago, to give certainty to pupils across the country who were worried about their exams. Dither and delay has made it harder for schools to prepare and created huge, additional stress for pupils.
These proposals still do not offer enough reassurance to pupils in the regions worst hit by coronavirus who have seen their learning severely disrupted. The government’s new expert group must urgently set out how they will make exams fair for these pupils, and what measures will be put in place now for pupils taking exams next academic year who are losing learning now.
We will look closely at the detail of these measures, and ensure that the interests of pupils and parents are put first.
The speech made by Guy Opperman, the Minister for Pensions, on 1 December 2020.
I am grateful to David Weeks and to Janice Turner, co-chairs of the Association of Member-Nominated Trustees for inviting me to speak with you again.
The last time I spoke at an AMNT event was in the October of 2019. Clearly a lot has happened since then. I was delighted to be reappointed as Pensions Minister after the December election. It is a job I asked to do at the start and it remains a job I really enjoy and believe in doing. I believe it is very, very important to do this job and I’m honoured and privileged that it is me taking it forward.
I also believe we’ve managed to do a great deal, not least of which is almost completing the Pension Schemes Bill, which I believe will make our pensions safer, better and greener. And it is definitely the case we have managed to progress legislation notwithstanding the impact of Covid-19.
I realise for all of us things are much less certain, and this is causing great uncertainty and much difficulty for many people. I experience it as a constituency MP, as every constituency MP does. So government is doing whatever it can to get us through this crisis and we are starting to see light at the end of the tunnel. But none of us are under any illusion that there are still several months of slog ahead, and I wish to thank all of you individually, and collectively.
I also want to wish AMNT many happy returns and thank all of you, the leaders of the organisation, but all of you, for offering a genuinely innovative and vital and independent voice in pensions governance.
This has unquestionably raised the standards of trusteeship with independent training and awareness sessions. I genuinely believe that the AMNT is very well placed for identifying problems and potential solutions, on key problems whether that is collective DC, ESG, or pooled fund voting as we’re going to talk about today.
So the Bill itself, I believe has taken things forward in a safer, better, greener way. David mentioned the work with the Work and Pensions Select Committee, who I am working hand-in-glove with to ensure that we are combating scams and giving occupational pension scheme measures to ensure transfers of pensions savings are made in a safe way and not to fraudulent schemes. There is a whole host of measures that derive from section 125 of the Bill that we feel will make pensions a great deal safer.
Clearly I think pensions will be better, and it is a combination of the huge amount of work by the team at DWP, and I’m speaking from Caxton House at the moment, and I’m very, very grateful for all the Bill team, all the policy teams, whether it is developing Collective Defined Contributions, a new product I think will be of fantastic assistance to many going forward, whether it is delivering on our legislation for pension dashboards to make savers better informed on how their money is growing and understand what they have, or the work on the DB white paper and all the reforms that flow from that.
And finally I think it is a greener bill, because for the first time, obviously we were the first government of the G7 to legislate to put net zero on the statute book by 2050. There’s no question on my mind, having spoken in Europe with European colleagues, that we lead the way on ESG. And we now have a situation where we are the first country in the world to put TCFD onto the statue book. I genuinely believe that we are putting climate change at the heart of pensions going forward and that is a very good thing and it will be something we build upon going forward.
I’ll touch upon another couple of clauses in the Bill before I get onto the substance of the report which we are going to talk about today.
On clause 107 – I know that some trustees have some concerns about this – let me reassure once again that there is no intention to frustrate legitimate business activities where they are conducted in good faith.
The Bill itself makes it clear, that offences are only committed if the person did not have a reasonable excuse for doing the act or engaging in the course of conduct.
And on clause 123, the measures in the Bill seek to support trustees and employers. It builds upon the work we have done for some considerable period of time and I will be bringing forward secondary legislation which will work in such a way that it does not prevent appropriate open schemes from investing in riskier investments, where there are potentially higher returns, as long as the risks being taken can be supported, and members’ benefits and the PPF are effectively protected.
There is, I repeat, no desire to see open schemes close unnecessarily.
Now I will turn to the Association of Member Nominated Trustees’ report on Bringing Shareholder Voting into the 21st century.
It is something I genuinely believe is an extremely important piece of work. I first spoke on this issue of trustees’ voting policies in February 2018 at the TUC Pensions Conference. I think I’ve spoken more at the TUC Conference than anyone else, maybe because people think I’m one of the most left-wing Tories around but whether I’m invited back in the Spring we will see.
At the time I remarked on the fact that when many schemes – especially defined contribution schemes – invest in equities, they invest alongside others – ultimately in pooled funds. Many defined benefit schemes invest in the same way too. I queried why it was a pre-condition, when schemes invest in this way, that they surrender voting rights. They get to choose the manager and the fund and with it the investment manager, but they don’t get to choose how to vote at annual general meetings for the companies’ shares they hold.
So at the tune I posed three questions and I think it’s worth contextualising what we’re doing today.
First, I asked, if this was a technology problem, why fund managers or others couldn’t fix the technology.
Secondly, I queried why, if this was all about asset managers thinking it was better to speak with one voice, what was so wrong with communicating that your investors have a diversity of views.
Thirdly, I wondered why, if this practice was in some way legally questionable, why some investment managers are letting some clients vote their shares in pooled funds.
On the question of technology, I do have a FinTech guide published earlier this year by the Investment Association, the trade body for fund managers, which remarks that historically investment and wealth management is a sector that has been slow to adopt emergent technology. That certainly does appear to be the case.
On the importance of speaking with one voice – I also have the Law Commission’s report on intermediated securities published last month, which quotes the fund industry line on pooled fund and voting but remarks drily that “this approach assumes that the decision on whether to exercise voting rights to influence a company is one solely for the asset manager, and does not consider the wishes or objectives of an ultimate investor.”
Which is certainly an interesting conclusion when principle 6 of the excellent updated version of the Financial Reporting Council’s Stewardship Code, which managers are expected to sign up to on a Comply or Explain basis, requires that signatory fund managers must explain “how they have sought and received clients’ views” and “how assets have been managed in alignment with clients’ stewardship and investment policies”. In some cases, not at all, appears to be the answer to both questions.
And on the legalities – the asset managers who allow trustees to set their own voting policies remain at large, committing no greater crime than empowering pension scheme trustees and delivering better outcomes. Indeed, I understand that more are set to come forward with innovative offerings. I strongly welcome that.
So I’m grateful to the AMNT for this excellent new report, written by Professor Iain Clacher, who is on the call I know, which sets out proposals for a new working group to examine:
the overly complex and archaic voting infrastructure,
underinvestment in the stewardship function in fund management.
transparency of voting policies and outcomes.
scheme-specific reporting requirements.
And I am pleased to announce the establishment of that group today – the Taskforce on Pension Scheme Voting Implementation. This will be a task and finish group, with a focused remit to look at:
how we facilitate the delivery of solutions to voting system issues which overcome the present obstacles to trustees implementing their own policies
secondly how we increase the number of asset managers who are prepared to engage with their clients’ preferences and follow or as a minimum “align or explain” on trustee voting policies, including via pooled arrangements.
thirdly, recommending regulatory and non-regulatory measures to ensure the convergence of asset managers’ approaches to voting policy and execution with trustees’ policies and preferences, especially in pooled funds.
I am also able to announce today the appointment of Simon Howard, until very recently the CEO of the UK Sustainable Investment and Finance Association as Chair, and Sarah Wilson, the CEO of Minerva Analytics as the vice-chair.
Both come with a long pedigree, and many of you will be familiar with their work. Simon and his organisation have done sterling work in promoting the importance of ESG and responsible investment more broadly, and have done excellent work on pensions, including their report Changing Course earlier this year.
As a result, I am taking forward their recommendations of a central directory of Statements of Investment Principles supported by TPR (The Pensions Regulator) and the DWP.
We need a long-standing champion of the asset owner voice in voting, and I cannot improve on Sarah Wilson, who is the Chief Executive, Minerva Analytics. She was awarded the Excellence in Corporate Governance Award from the International Corporate Governance Network, for her efforts to improve the essential infrastructure that underpins effective corporate governance and investor stewardship.
The group will also include representatives of the AMNT, with the rest of the membership to be announced in due course.
The group will be supported by the DWP, but independent of the DWP. I have also asked the group to support and advise on the development of voting policies for occupational pension schemes, and further proposals for better disclosure of votes in a standardised and comparable way, which allows trustees and ultimately savers to see the quality of the service they are getting.
I want genuinely for this to be a standardised approach across the board.
In the final minutes of my remarks let me explain why I think this step is so important. It’s very simple. The investment chain is very long and very tangled, but ultimately you, as trustees of pension schemes are the asset owners at the end of that chain. And when you act, the ownership chain is tighter.
That means better governance of firms in the real economy, more sustainable value creation and better outcomes for your savers.
When trustees invest, too often they are being asked to select funds in advance on vague or sometimes non-committal voting policies and historic voting records which are opaque, inconsistent and sometimes incomplete. That’s why I’ve spoken a few times about a mixed economy in voting. The ability for trustees to set their own granular voting policy where they wish, and to expect to be able to find a manager who is willing to implement it at a fair price.
Trustee voting policies more generally do need to improve – we urgently need to call time on SIP statements like “We leave it all to our fund managers”. But I see no reason why trustees shouldn’t be able to determine a high level policy, find an asset manager whose policy reflects it, and appoint that manager to implement their own policy.
But we will get more engagement, better stewardship, better outcomes, and a stronger economy where asset owners who want to have a voice are able to speak up – however they invest, including in pooled funds –rather than be suppressed. It should not necessarily be the case that they need to switch to segregated mandates to set such a policy.
For many schemes, such as defined contribution schemes investing via platforms, this will be impractical. I’m determined that this does work and I believe that it will. I realise that we could all sit back and do nothing, and one firm could emerge with some great innovation to make voting in pooled funds a really practical reality. But I don’t think it is right to sit back.
Longer term we need more than one or two firms to come forward. I accept that the market will provide innovative solutions. But if we are to make that happen, trustees need to use their buying power NOW.
Tell your adviser – remember, they are just an adviser, and you are the decision-maker – that you’re switching to a fund manager that will honour your policy unless similar flexibility is granted, at pace, by your current manager. I’ve invite you not to take no for an answer. Don’t tell me that the consultants won’t sign off unless you’ve paid them handsomely to certify that a more effective voting policy is in your members’ interests. Actually, do tell me, and I will tell the whole world.
This system, a network of computers saying no to one another, a long system of blocked pipework, needs to be unblocked to allow trustees’ votes – and maybe eventually their beneficiaries’ votes – to be those that are counted by the companies they own.
I rule nothing out in making this work properly.
To my mind, doing this will make pensions safer – because if we give trustees a voice in voting, we can expect tougher action on pay for failure. The current tangled investment chain means that signals are far too often too weak, with sadly only 50 UK-listed votes on remuneration scoring dissent of above 20%, and only 5 defeated. I think it’ll make pensions better – because pension scheme memberships are more representative of the population than the fund management industry. And because trustees are ultimately accountable to their savers, they are going to be much better at pressing for boards who are more representative of the people who invest with them. In contrast, AMNT research last year found that 30% of fund managers had no voting policy on gender diversity and 75% had no policy on ethnic diversity. Trustees can do better than this.
And I believe it will make pensions Greener – because for however much progress we have made, we have further to go. A survey from Edelman found that 69 per cent of institutional investors wanted companies to tie executive pay to sustainability. And yet almost no company does. Why is that? Sir Christopher Hohn of The Children’s Investment Fund Foundation has described asset managers as sheep, and highlighted that “a lot of them will say ‘we will vote for someone’s else’s resolution’, but why aren’t they filing their own resolutions?” I think that is a fair question. Engaged trustees can table their own resolutions and genuinely make a change on returns of voting.
The Investment Association paper on FinTech I quoted earlier said that “for tech adoption to succeed there must be a clear specific business problem to solve, together with an organisational culture and multi-level sponsorship that supports innovation.”
I believe this is a specific business problem crying out for a solution – that will allow asset owners to take ownership of their assets, however they invest.
Thank you very much indeed.
The comments made by Dominic Raab, the Foreign Secretary, on 2 December 2020.
As 3 Hong Kong activists begin prison sentences, I urge the Hong Kong and Beijing authorities to bring an end to their campaign to stifle opposition.
Prosecution decisions must be fair and impartial, and the rights and freedoms of people in Hong Kong must be upheld.
The comments made by Alok Sharma, the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, on 2 December 2020.
Since the start of the pandemic, every single person has made an immense sacrifice to protect themselves, their loved ones and the health of our nation. Through it all, we have remained united to defeat a virus that has taken too many before their time.
As a nation we owe every scientist, clinician and trial volunteer an enormous debt of gratitude for their victory won against odds that at times seemed impossible. It is thanks to their efforts, and of our Vaccine Taskforce, that the UK was the first country to sign a deal with Pfizer/BioNTech and will now be the first to deploy their vaccine.
While today’s breakthrough is a positive one, we will not end the pandemic overnight. But in years to come, we will look back and remember this moment as the day the United Kingdom led humanity’s charge against this terrible disease.
The statement made by Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, on 2 December 2020.
It is almost a year since humanity has been tormented by COVID
Across the world, economic output has plummeted and a million and a half people have died
And all the time we have waiting and hoping for the day when the searchlights of science would pick out our invisible enemy
And give us the power to stop that enemy from making us ill – and now the scientists have done it
And they have used the virus itself to perform a kind of biological jiu-jitsu, to turn the virus on itself in the form of a vaccine from an idea that was pioneered in this country by Edward Jenner in 1796
And today we can announce that the government has accepted the recommendation from the independent Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency to approve the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for distribution across the United Kingdom. After months of clinical trials, involving thousands of people to ensure that the vaccine meets the strictest, internationally recognised, standards of safety, quality and effectiveness.
Thanks to the fantastic work of Kate Bingham and the Vaccines Task Force, we purchased more than 350 million doses of seven different vaccine candidates, and the UK was the first country in the world to pre-order supplies of this Pfizer vaccine securing 40 million doses.
Through our Winter Plan, the NHS has been preparing for the biggest programme of mass vaccination in the history of the UK.
And that is going to begin next week, and in line with the advice of the independent Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation the first phase will include care home residents, health and care staff, the elderly and those who are clinically extremely vulnerable,
But there are immense logistical challenges: the vaccine must be stored at minus 70 degrees and each person needs two injections, three weeks apart.
So it will inevitably take some months before all the most vulnerable are protected.
Long and cold months. So it is all the more vital that as we celebrate this scientific achievement we are not carried away with over optimism
Or fall into the naïve belief that the struggle is over. It’s not, we’ve got to stick to our Winter Plan, a comprehensive programme to suppress the virus, protect the NHS and the vulnerable, keep education and the economy going and use treatments, testing and vaccines to enable us to return to much closer to normal by spring.
Today in England we have ended national restrictions, opening up significant parts of the economy in doing so; but also replacing them with tough tiers to keep this virus down.
And I know that those tiers will mean continued hardship for many, and it is going to continue to be tough for some sectors but until the vaccine is deployed, our plan does rely on all of us continuing to make sacrifices to protect those we love.
So please, please continue to follow the rules where you live, remember hands, face, space – and if you live in a tier 3 area where community testing will be made available, please take part in that community testing.
Together, these steps are for now the surest way to protect yourselves and those you love and by reducing the transmission of the virus, help de-escalate your area to a lower level of restrictions, as vaccines and testing, as I say, take an ever larger share of the burden.
And as we do all this, we are no longer resting on the mere hope that we can return to normal next year in the spring, but rather on the sure and certain knowledge that we will succeed: and together reclaim our lives and all the things about our lives that we love
So I want to thank the scientists and all those around the world who have taken part in the trials and got us to this stage.
The speech made by Anneliese Dodds, the Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, on 2 December 2020.
This has been an extraordinary year. As it draws to a close, and with the prospect of a vaccine on the horizon, thoughts are turning to recovery, and how we can build a better, more secure future for the United Kingdom. That will require contributions from everyone; public, private, mutual and voluntary sectors. In particular it will require the support of the finance industry— where Britain is a global leader.
But it must also start with an honest appraisal of where our weaknesses lay, which have been so ruthlessly laid bare during this crisis.
The UK entered the pandemic with worryingly low levels of household financial resilience, after a decade that saw insecure work rise and wages flat line. A quarter of all families had less than £100 in the bank when the crisis began. Since March, 4 and a half million people have accumulated over £6 billion in debt and arrears.
We also entered the pandemic as one of the most unequal countries in Europe. That too has accelerated. As more and more economic activity was locked down, people on higher incomes, who could work from home, put money away. Their savings have risen. But those on the lowest incomes have been, on average, £170 a month worse off – losing 14% of their pre-crisis income.
And we entered the pandemic after a decade of too many examples of poor corporate practice. High profile collapses like BHS and Carillion indicated severe shortcomings in governance.
During the pandemic, most businesses have made herculean efforts to support their staff and local communities. But coronavirus has also shone a spotlight on problems: the Boohoo’s supply chain, the gaping hole in Arcadia’s pension scheme, the ‘fire and rehire’ approach taken at companies from British Airways to Pret a Manger.
When we emerge from the crisis we must deal with those challenges- of financial resilience, inequality and poor corporate practice. We all want life to return to normal. But that cannot mean a return to business as usual. We should never again let our country, or our economy, be so vulnerable to external shocks. Because we count the cost of that in lost jobs and businesses gone to the wall.
Financial services have an essential role to play in the recovery, and in laying the foundations for a better, more secure future. In fact, the recovery cannot happen without them. That’s one of many reasons why I’m so pleased to be addressing you today.
A well-functioning, responsible banking sector can help people save and build their financial resilience. Pension funds can take the money workers set aside for tomorrow, and put it to work, backing the businesses of today. As the stewards of our largest businesses, asset managers can raise the standard of corporate behaviour. And insurance companies can direct the money we all put by in case the worst happens, and make sure it builds a better, greener future.
Those aims hark back to the origins of the financial sector. A sector that saw its role as helping build social fabric, encouraging saving and resilience. Often those origins lay in Scotland. It was the Scottish minister Henry Duncan who is credited with founding the world’s first commercial savings bank. (Though I have to say that there was such a bank established by a female social entrepreneur in Tottenham. But she was not such a good publicist!!) And it was two other Scottish churchmen, Robert Wallace and Alexander Webster, who founded the first funded pension—the Widows Pension Fund to look after the wives and children of their fellow clergymen. The link between finance and social reform threads its way through the ‘friendly societies’ of the nineteenth century to the origins of trade unionism and, indeed, the Labour Party. And the purpose of financial services, helping people save, to transact, to share risk, to fund responsible business, is especially important to me. My father was an accountant, who ran his own small business. I saw first-hand how committed he was, to enabling his clients to do the right thing, grow their businesses and support the local economy.
Yet some firms have strayed a long way from this approach. When the finance sector stops thinking of itself as providing a means to empower individuals or businesses, but instead as an end in itself – it loses its way. And for a country like the UK, with such a large and powerful financial services industry, it is a huge lost opportunity. Indeed the results can be catastrophic.
By 2008, the finance sector had lost its way. But in 2020, we have often seen the sector at its best. Setting up huge new systems overnight to get government-backed loans out to businesses who were desperately short of cash. Helping those who ran into difficulty to keep a roof over their head. Partnering with charities to support those most in need.
We must harness that sense of active commitment as we plan for the recovery- a recovery which must be environmentally productive, not destructive; and one marked by providing additional opportunity, not wasting it.
Many in financial services are already blazing a trail here in many ways, with the amount raised in green bonds on the London Stock Exchange having nearly tripled in the last three years. But we know too there is much more to do. The UK is only just over a third of the way to achieving the targets we need to hit to reach net zero, and we will not get there without the power of the finance sector to mobilise capital and put it to sustainable use.
We need to go further, faster. That’s why Labour has called for it to be mandatory for all listed companies to report in line with the recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-Related Disclosures next year, when the UK hosts the COP26 conference. And it’s why we sought to amend the Pension Schemes Bill – working hand in hand with pensions providers – so that pension schemes become aligned with the Paris Agreement.
Sadly, the government’s ambition in this area still falls far short of what is needed. Ahead of last week’s Spending Review, we called on government to bring forward £30bn of green investment in the next 18 months, supporting the creation of 400,000 jobs. That in turn could stimulate more private capital. Unbelievably, when it came to it the Chancellor actually cut £300 million of capital spending next year, compared with previous plans.
The second area where responsible finance has a critical role to play is in extending opportunity to every part of our country. We know, of course, that the UK’s financial services sector is more than just the City of London – with two-thirds of the sector’s 2.3 million jobs being outside the capital – but it is telling that people continually use that shorthand. This is symptomatic of a broader sense in which our economy is out of kilter. Holding all else equal, people living in the North of England have been more likely to be made redundant during this crisis- and of course, many are now, along with people in the Midlands and Yorkshire, much more likely to be living under the highest additional Covid-related restrictions.
Instead of accepting that regional inequality, we need to make every single part of this country the best place in the world to grow up in and the best place to grow old in. For that to happen, we need opportunities on people’s doorsteps –not at the other end of the country. That means businesses in every town that people want to work for, and where they can envisage their children working. And every part of the country must feel like a good place to set up home. That needs decent and genuinely affordable, energy-efficient homes. We can’t achieve any of that without the finance sector getting money to where it needs to be.
To deliver on those two aims – a greener economy, with opportunities right across the country– requires policymakers to work hand in hand with the finance sector. Because responsible financial services firms deserve a responsible government in return.
Too often, in recent years, we’ve seen precisely the opposite. A sector which accounts for 10% of our economic output has been almost totally left out of the government’s trade negotiations with the EU. What started as plans for an ambitious financial services chapter in a free trade agreement, with talk of mutual recognition and super equivalence, has been watered down and watered down. Now the Conservative Government is trying desperately to dress up a sow’s ear as a silk purse – their unilateral decision to grant access to UK markets, with the hope – hope, not guarantee- that we might get offered the same in return.
It is not a foregone conclusion that we will emerge with a deal, as last weekend’s revelations indicated. If we do obtain a deal, media reports suggest it will be as thin as gruel – it won’t contain anything for our largest exporting industry. And along the way, having threatened to break international law as a negotiating tactic, the government has trashed our reputation with other potential trading partners. Little wonder we’ve seen over 7,000 financial services jobs lost already and £1.2 trillion in assets poised to follow.
Sadly, what’s true of Brexit has been true of coronavirus too. Last minute changes to economic support schemes have left businesses in all sectors not knowing what on earth is about to happen next. The Chancellor set out four versions of his winter economy plan in six weeks, all of them before winter had even begun. We have come out of national lockdown today and yet the business support packages for Tier 2 and Tier 3 areas of the country are still inadequate and unfair, and we still lack clarity about what comes next.
We’ve still had nothing from the government on what will happen to those companies who’ve taken out loans and find themselves burdened with unsustainable debt, despite the finance sector’s best efforts to draw attention to the issue. There’s still no word on the mysterious Project Birch plans to support our most strategic industries. Above all, there is still no proper plan to see the country through to March. That’s completely irresponsible, in a situation where the UK is experiencing the worst economic downturn in the G7 – and where the OECD yesterday forecast that our recovery will take longer than the rest of the G7, too.
It doesn’t have to be like this. Politicians and financial firms should be working hand in hand to lay the groundwork for our recovery. I want us to have a genuine partnership so that together we can deliver security and opportunity for every part of the country.
I’ve said today what a responsible financial services industry might look like.
My promise in return is that from Labour, under new leadership, you would get responsible government. A government that plans for the long-term, not chopping and changing every five minutes. A government that knows the value of one of our most important sectors and seeks to maximise it. A government that, once it has set the regulatory framework and the operating environment, will do all it can to ensure stability. That way, businesses and finance can plan for the future and deliver the fair and sustainable growth, and much-needed jobs, that every part of our country deserves.
The comments made by Ed Miliband, the Shadow Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, on 2 December 2020.
Let me join the Minister in expressing deep sympathy for those who are at risk of losing their jobs. The test of government and indeed this House is whether that sympathy translates into action. So I have four specific questions for him.
First, Philip Green owes the workers at Arcadia a moral duty. His family took a dividend worth 1.2bn from the company, the largest in UK history, more than three times the size of the pension deficit. The workers at Arcadia should not pay the price of Philip Green’s greed. So will the Minister now publicly call for Philip Green to make good any shortfall in the pension scheme? And will he ensure the pensions regulator takes all possible steps to make sure this happens?
Second, we need to learn lessons. In the insolvency bill this summer, Labour put forward amendments to make pension fund holders priority creditors when businesses went bust. The Minister said it was not necessary. Does he now agree now that it was a mistake, that this change would have better protected the pensions at Arcadia and that this should be put right through legislation in the future?
Third, on the workers at Debenhams and indeed Arcadia facing redundancy, given the scale of redundancies and the grim economic backdrop will he look at providing specific and targeted help for them to get back to work?
Fourth, we have an emergency on our high streets with an estimated 20,000 shops closing and 200,000 workers losing their jobs since the economic crisis began. While we welcome the support that has been provided, will he recognise the Government must do more? Extending the rent evictions moratorium beyond December when it is due to expire. Increasing the support for hospitality businesses which was a call across this House yesterday. And addressing the massive disadvantage high streets face around business rates compared to online retailers?
Today is a day of great news on the vaccine. The Government has a massive responsibility to preserve the businesses and jobs we need on the other side of this crisis. They are still not acting on a scale that meets the economic emergency our country faces. They need to do so.
The comments made by Chloe Smith, the Minister for the Constitution and Devolution, on 1 December 2020.
The Fixed-term Parliaments Act caused constitutional chaos last year which, when combined with total gridlock in Parliament, meant the previous Government couldn’t deliver what it was asked to do.
Ultimately, at critical moments for our country, we trust the public to decide. So we are going back to the system that lets elections happen when they are needed. We want to return to constitutional arrangements that give people more confidence in what to expect, and more security.