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National Insurance Contributions Bill

I am not sure whether someone would remain a sole trader in those circumstances, but it is true that becoming responsible for someone else's payroll is often the most difficult step for those who are self-employed or trading on their own account. I certainly think that we should explore that possibility further. The third, and final, reason why I support the Bill is an entirely different one. The Bill is quite rare in that it recognises the rights of non-workers. I have never forgotten an encounter I had when I was representing a north-east constituency. It occurred at the height of the engineering recession of the early 1980s, when the jobcentre manager in Darlington said to me, ““There's plenty of work about, Mr Fallon, but very few jobs.”” What he meant by that was, of course, that the labour market had fossilised. So many restrictions and costs were involved in hiring extra labour that it was too expensive and too risky for firms to take on more staff. Of course, the previous Conservative Government addressed that through a range of liberalisations that tackled areas such as employee rights, access to tribunals and restrictive practices, and I think that a Government need to do that every few years. They need to look again at the balance between those who are fortunate enough to be in the labour market and enjoying the various job protections which this House has given them successively over the years and those who are excluded from the labour market, because those who are excluded have rights too, and if we make it increasingly difficult for companies to fire people, then we inevitably make it increasingly difficult for companies to hire people. If we build in unlimited awards for various types of discrimination—sexual discrimination, for example—we discourage firms from employing more women. There is a balance to be struck therefore, and I think that needs to be reassessed every few years. Small businesses in my constituency tell me that at present they will do almost anything they can to avoid taking on new people, partly because of the difficulty of getting rid of them if they turn out to be unsuitable or unreliable or if they are not prepared to work hard enough, and partly because of the administrative costs piled on them by the last Labour Government through, for instance, needing to check student loan repayments, child care reliefs and immigration status. When we consider measures such as those in this Bill, we need to be thinking all the time about how we can make it easier for businesses to employ people. This is a short Bill, and it would be wrong to overstate its effects. It must be considered in the context of the other measures to help small businesses, such as the reduction in their corporation tax rate, which I welcome, and the extension of the guarantee scheme. I suspect that the Bill will prove to be successful however, and, if so, I hope that it will be the start of a much wider and deeper process of removing the barriers to growth, such as the thicket of regulation our small businesses have to struggle through and the heavy burden of taxation that still inhibits too many of them. I welcome the Bill.