Simon Hoare

Let us take a look at the amendment which Mr Speaker has selected in the name of the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister’s amendment tells us that he “welcomes the policy paper” on “the plan for small and medium sized businesses, which sets out”— wait for it— “a comprehensive vision for productivity and success”. [Interruption.] “Wow” indeed, as my hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Sarah Bool) says from a sedentary position—she is less well trained in keeping her excitement levels under control. After 14 years of opposition and 18 months in government: a policy paper, a plan, a comprehensive vision—that is the sum of the contribution from the Treasury Bench towards these important and vital parts of the sector. The Government need to learn, I suggest, a key and important lesson: policy papers, plans and comprehensive visions deliver of themselves nothing. They create no jobs. They give no certainty. They provide no confidence to employees, employers, investors, entrepreneurs, innovators or consumers. Strategy and policy are not the same things. Vision and delivery are not two sides of the same coin. The Government tell us in their amendment that their Employment Rights Bill “will help season workers by bringing the UK’s outdated employment laws into the 21st century”. Well, I would dispute first and foremost the idea that our employment laws are outdated; I think they have been organic and iterative over the decades, as one would expect. But the Government will not help seasonal workers if they cannot become seasonal workers because putative employers have neither the confidence to employ nor the headroom to create jobs and pay salaries. We are in fantasy land, with a fantasy idea about how to run an economy: we just legislate and, hey presto—pantomime-like—it happens. A strategy is published and—bingo!—it is all resolved. That is not the case. This first example will, I am sure, be of enormous interest to the Labour party. Mark Fulton, a constituent of mine in Tolpuddle, is the landlord of the Martyrs Inn.