I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. Subcontractors also come to us with these issues. As well as the customer or consumer, there are currently no protections for those subcontractors at the end of the day. New clause 37 would go some way to addressing that.
I will deal with new clause 38 in short order. It proposes to turn off the tap of public funding to those who have failed to discharge their duties to their company’s staff under the Companies Act 2006. I mentioned Mr Skillen; a local constituent got in touch to tell me that he is back in business. The company that he is currently a director of is in receipt of public funds. Mr Skillen is a director of four limited companies, each one coming after winding up a firm. Those companies are interlinked via control and ownership structures. Through that, Government loan funding was applied for and granted just before Mr Skillen became a director and owner of a large chunk of the new enterprise.
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New clause 38 would simply prevent those who have failed to discharge their duties from receiving public money or support for any company for which they are listed as a director. Mr Skillen’s modus operandi was to misuse and mis-sell under the Government’s green deal scheme. He has popped up in a company benefiting from taxpayer funding that is also involved in energy business. It is simply not good enough that policy interventions intended to promote a wider economic strategy, be it local or national, are manipulated and used by spivs who are able to hide behind company registration and face no barriers to their actions from the registrar, short of the nuclear option of being barred from acting as a director.
We have seen a number of cases, the most high profile being P&O, in relation to which Mr Hebblethwaite told a joint sitting of Select Committees of this House that he broke the law and would do it again. British Airways breached its duties as employers and breached employment law—its chief executive happily admitted to breaking the law. Such blatant and open law breaking cannot be rewarded with taxpayer support. The new clause will ensure that those breaching laws that are meant to protect workers cannot then dip into the same workers’ pockets for financial support. That would not impact on workers because, despite the answer the Minister gave in Committee, any such funding such as the furlough scheme would not be affected by the new clause.