Clause 2 - Statutory paternity pay
Employment Bill
11:45 am
Mr Philip Hammond (Runnymede and Weybridge, Conservative)
The hon. Member for North Norfolk cited a valid example of where it might be appropriate to allow someone to continue to work and to draw statutory paternity pay. Our difficulty is that the Minister has not said that that is what the Government intend to do under regulations. I assume from his silence—or, rather, from his open acknowledgment that he cannot yet foresee a situation in which they would wish to use that power—that we can deduce that it is not the Government's intention to
give the flexibility to which the hon. Member for North Norfolk referred.
The Minister said that he would like to keep his options open. I suggest that Henry VIII was probably a great person for doing that, and that the best way of truly keeping all options open is to abolish Parliament altogether. Our purpose in being here is to try to circumscribe the enormous powers that Secretaries of State have, lest, at some unforeseeable future point, the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry is not the present fragrant incumbent but someone of an altogether less agreeable disposition who might use the extensive and unconstrained powers in a way that Parliament would find onerous and unacceptable.
In general, I therefore think it legitimate to try to tighten Bills and to remove as much discretion as possible. At the very least, we should try to get Ministers to scratch from the depths of their brain instances of occasions when they might need the powers that they say they need. If, with the benefit of huge civil service resources, a Minister cannot produce a single example of the intention to use such a power, or of a circumstance in which it might need to be used, it almost certainly need not be included in the Bill. That is my motivation in probing these matters.
The hon. Member for North Norfolk has come up with a good example, but the Minister has not endorsed it, so we are no further forward in establishing whether there is a practical reason for the provision. However, as we have had the debate, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.