As our national economy searches for growth, we look for direction. As our small businesses, our shopkeepers and our entrepreneurs struggle with unyielding burdens, they look for relief. As many who are unemployed, both short-term and long-term, continue their search for employment, they ask for hope. And so we turn for inspiration to the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill. Here was our chance to send a clear message that we were going to roll back the European regulation that is calcifying the spirit of enterprise. Here was the opportunity to come forward with new ideas and initiatives for new funding sources to assist in dealing with the gap in funding for our small businesses.
Here was an opportunity to press for changes in the jobs tax and to look for more tax deductions for people who wish to put their capital at risk in our small businesses. Here was an opportunity indeed to send a clear message to our local bureaucrats, with their pettifogging rules and regulations which are causing more misery to shopkeepers in our town centres, that they should stand back a bit and understand how hard it is in many town centres for small businesses to make progress. This Bill was the opportunity to address all those things, and I look forward to hearing in Committee how we have done on all of them.
I wish to address one part of the Bill, and it relates to what has been termed “hire and fire” and what has been termed “compensated no-fault dismissals”. I do this because I do not feel that Adrian Beecroft’s proposals have been given due consideration. There are strong arguments on both sides as to whether or not we should implement them, but we have not investigated the issues sufficiently carefully and it is wrong to dismiss the proposals with ridicule, with abuse or with fearmongering. Let me explain why that is.
If we look at the issues in developed economies, particularly those of the United Kingdom and the United States, relating to how we recover from recessions, we discover that our economies are finding it tougher to create jobs as we recover. In the period before the 1990s, it took on average about six months from the economy recovering for it to reach full employment. Since the 1990s, the figure has gone from an average of six months’ further delay to one of 15 months or more. The United States is a much better economy at recovering from recessions than the United Kingdom is. In the US, it takes on average four to five years for the economy to bounce back, but in the UK it takes eight to 10 years. There are therefore two strong reasons for examining why the UK is not as good at recovering employment as other countries are and why, even in those countries, it is becoming more difficult to associate growth with employment.