Clause 40 - Intervention by Secretary of State
Enterprise Bill
6:00 pm
Mr Nigel Waterson (Eastbourne, Conservative)
I take that point; I am not trying to denigrate the amount of time that the Secretary of State has spent on the matter. From that point of view, it is reassuring that she and other Ministers, however much time they have spent on it, have not come up with the remotest possibility of any other heading to put in primary legislation. However, suppose a different Secretary of State were to take over during what remains of the life of this Government—someone with a much more interventionist approach, who wanted to intervene before breakfast, before lunch and before dinner, to coin a phrase. This would be a wonderful section through which they could do that, by coming up with a whole range of different grounds.
Lest the Under-Secretary should think that fanciful, let her look ahead to amendment No. 262, which we shall debate very shortly, under clause 56. It is a workmanlike attempt by some of her old Labour colleagues in the House to do just that—open up a great hole in the legislation through which such interventionist policy could be enforced.
There is a problem about certainty. If the Under-Secretary wanted to go halfway towards allaying the concerns of the business community, she might agree to go away and consider later amendments to exclude any changes affecting mergers or investigations of mergers already afoot. That would take a lot of steam out of the business community's concerns. We are not happy with the explanations. I am not saying for a moment that the Under-Secretary has not tried hard and been absolutely open about the thinking behind the provision. However, given the Department's current thinking, it is precisely the mystery of why on earth we need to leave that gap in the legislation that still causes me concern. We might wish to return to the subject later. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 40 ordered to stand part of the Bill
Clause 41 ordered to stand part of the Bill.