Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)

My Lords, I am speaking from the Back Benches to make two brief points. I apologise for not speaking at Second Reading. First, if we have to have a purpose clause—it is not an approach that I particularly favour—it has to include a reference to competitiveness, growth and perhaps, as the noble Baroness, Lady Carberry of Muswell Hill, has suggested, productivity. Does the Minister agree? Secondly, like my noble friend Lord Hunt of Wirral, I am shocked at the number of government amendments made to the Bill at such a late stage, and to legislation that is so important to all parts of business, all employers in the public sector and of course all employees, and their representatives, whom the noble Lord, Lord Monks, rightly referenced. I have some sympathy for the Minister. I had a similar experience with the Procurement Act, although it was not quite as bad because we had consulted extensively, and it was a Lords starter. But like this Bill, it was introduced before it was ready and needed a large number of amendments. As the responsible Minister, I was very keen to listen to criticism of the detail and respond by agreeing to amendments or tabling government amendments that responded to the genuine difficulties, and I think there are genuine difficulties with this Bill. We worked across the House very well and I hope the noble Baroness will consult her Front-Bench colleagues, the noble Baronesses, Lady Chapman and Lady Hayman of Ullock, who engaged constructively in scrutiny on all the procurement detail. Another good example is the minimum wage legislation referenced by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Grady. I remember when I was at Tesco persuading the then Labour Government that they should not include a requirement to put the national minimum wage on all payslips. It was going to cost us millions and require a change in our IT systems. Labour listened and the implementation of the Act went more smoothly as a result. It is very important to listen to the practicalities when making these changes. They can affect different parts of the Bill in different ways. Finally, we have heard a lot about Europe and comparisons with Europe. I have spent a lot of time in Europe, but I would be interested to hear also about what is going on in the growing markets of Asia and—I suppose until more recently—the growing market of the United States.