My Lords, I thank all those who have taken part in this important debate and the noble Lord, Lord Cotter, for his general support. I hope that his influence will be, as I think I heard him say, that as many shares as possible go to employees. I accept that this debate is about balance and we are obviously putting our finger on a particular balance. I certainly hope that the eventual situation is closer to our position than the minimum.
I thank my noble friend Lord Clarke of Hampstead for his contribution. I hope that the Government will look back at previous privatisations because they have not been universally successful in properly engaging employees through share ownership schemes. His other point, which supplements my own point, is important: that this must not be seen as in place of a proper relationship between employees, trade unions and the new company but must complement it and make the whole relationship stronger and more meaningful. He referred to the trust solution, and the closer we are to a trust solution than an individual-ownership solution the more comfortable we would be. We hope that the Government are thinking in that way.
The noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, said that this was a great improvement on the previous Government’s contribution. I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Wirral, is not here to assure me that my recollection and research are correct, but my understanding of our debate is that we took the point on employee share ownership but because our Bill did not have a 100 per cent sale, it left within our discretion an ability to award shares—fairly late in the Bill we were persuaded of that situation—and therefore our advice was that we could bring that forward without the need for a specific clause.
The noble Baroness made the point that there must be a balance between the new owners and the employees, which I take on board—I think it is the same point as the Minister made. However, she said that it would be wrong to introduce too much complexity into the Bill. My reading of the situation is that this will be quite a lengthy process, and we are seeking as much clarity as possible in this area, because we want to create confidence in the workforce. The more that can be done to create that confidence, the better the outcome.
I welcome the Minister’s general agreement with the direction. We seem to be at one on this. He made the point about it being a sufficient proportion to attract private capital. I recognise the weight of his argument but we take a different judgment in this amendment: that 80 per cent is sufficient. It is interesting that he mentioned as the two largest cases Rolls-Royce and British Airways. I should declare an interest in claiming that BA was a success, as I spent 20 years of my life preparing it. I was not there when it happened but still, never mind—you cannot win them all. Rolls-Royce is probably one of the most brilliantly successful companies in the world and it had one of the largest, so I hope that this will come out at more than 10 per cent in the end.
Finally, I sincerely thank the Minister for and congratulate him on his response to our specific questions. Having been, in the memorable and not too distant past, in his position and trying to summon up bits of paper from the Box, I admire his performance but recognise the limitations of such a situation. We asked a number of specific questions. I would be grateful if he could reflect on those in Hansard, just as we will reflect on his response, to see whether it would be sensible to write a fairly comprehensive letter for the record on this whole issue—since we are about to come on to another couple of its areas—of how far the Government are able to go in creating the atmosphere for employees to feel confident about this as we go through the Bill.
Postal Services Bill
Proceeding contribution from
Lord Tunnicliffe
(Labour)
in the House of Lords on Wednesday, 16 March 2011.
It occurred during Committee of the Whole House (HL)
and
Debate on bills on Postal Services Bill.
About this proceeding contribution
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726 c249-50 Session
2010-12Chamber / Committee
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