It is a privilege to follow such an impassioned speech, as well as the extremely logical speech of the noble Lord, Lord King of Bridgwater. I have spent a lifetime promoting wider share ownership, and was for 10 years chairman of the Industrial Co-partnership Association.
All the points that show this clause to be madness have been made. It is extraordinary, in view of the very sensible criticisms in Committee, that the Government have proceeded with this and have seemed to ignore every single comment that this House, with its great qualifications in this area, has put forward. I wonder who is on the receiving end of our help in trying to forge better legislation.
The noble Lord, Lord Flight, was perfectly right to say that legislation to safeguard employee rights has reached the point where it is now preventing jobs from being created. Far from protecting jobs, it has reached the point of job destruction. The right reverend Prelate raised the point about flexible working. Try running a small business, nursing home or anything you care to think of with everybody asking for flexitime. Who mans the ship? It is important that you have core staff working through, to more or less hold the thing together. Of course, there is a nice element of human relationships in small businesses, and they go out of their way to try to meet employee needs in that direction, but pretending that you can bring in a level of compulsion on flexible working would only be done by somebody who has never actually experienced the first-hand difficulties of a running small business.
In Committee I made the point, which has been cited today, that to encourage wider share ownership is good. To recognise that employee protection has possibly been overdone in a number of instances is
also right. However, to muddle the two together, to make a quid pro quo in this way, strikes at the very heart of the trust and sense of common purpose that all businesses are trying to build up. Therefore, this clause must be resisted on all fronts.