Corporate Businesses and Franchisees: Regulatory Environment

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—(Keir Mather.)

17:44:00

Speaking long before I was born, G. K. Chesterton said that “big business…is now organized like an army. It is, as some would say…militarism…without the military virtues.” Heaven knows what he would say if he was alive now, as global corporations have such influence on all our lives. Yet it is the small and medium-sized businesses in my Lincolnshire constituency and in constituencies across this country that are the backbone of our economy. They also provide the particularities—the colour and shape —of the places that each of us calls home. Those small and medium-sized businesses reinvest in the communities of which they are a part and provide opportunities for local people. We all know them from our daily experience as customers, but we also know them from the representations they make to us as Members of Parliament. Today, I speak in the interests of those small businesses, those entrepreneurs, those people who devote so much of their time, skill and energy for the common good—for the national interest and the common good drive all that I do in this place. Small and medium-sized businesses employing up to 250 people make up about 99% of businesses, but just think of the influence and effect of the other 1%. When SMEs are accused of wrongdoing or even of breaking the law, they often have little in the way of resources to defend themselves, so they are at the mercy of powerful regulators and the caprice of giant competitors. In contrast, the big multinational companies, which have come to dominate too much of our economy, have armies of compliance officers, lawyers and spin doctors to bat away legitimate concerns. The fear that many of us in this Chamber have about two-tier justice runs parallel to our certainty that there is a two-tier economy. Faceless, heartless multinational firms often have little in the way of roots here, and many tech firms use such rootlessness to justify decisions to pay little, if any, tax. Corporate behemoths have grown ever larger, ever more dominant in their sectors, ever more detached from their customers, and ever more determined to bend rules and evade justice. In recent years, we have seen profiteering by, for example, the major supermarkets, which very often give their suppliers—primary producers such as the farmers and growers in my constituency—a raw deal. We have seen them distort the food chain, yet take advantage of the disruption brought by the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. Indeed, the pandemic exacerbated the power of greedy globalists. Following research on 17,000 big firms, the trade union Unite has highlighted that average profit margins have soared by 30% compared with the pre-pandemic period. In 2022, the profits of the 350 largest companies in Britain increased by about 89% compared with pre-pandemic levels. Contrast that if you will, Madam Deputy Speaker, with the plight of smaller businesses, which face ever greater costs and ever more unfair competition from their giant competitors. What of the claims of the enthusiastic globalists that the world would be a better place as a result of their activities? Do you remember the globalists—those people who were addicted to modernity and change? Who has really benefited? In an economy in which standards of living are falling, productivity has stalled and the state grows ever bigger in the face of rising worklessness, it seems to me that the only beneficiaries of globalisation are a few people at the top of those corporate businesses. We need not monopolies, but a multiplicity of businesses, such as start-up firms, local firms, and firms that innovate and engage in new activities in the economy, rather than cement existing practices. Let us give those businesses what they need, which is greater freedom, while the big corporate monoliths need to be regulated so that they do not exploit the marketplace they dominate. Think for a moment of the banks. I have a vision of banking—I hope you might too, Madam Deputy Speaker—rooted in a sort of “Dad’s Army” approach: a Captain Mainwaring figure committed to his community, in close touch with his customers and caring about the businesses they run. That was not just a fiction in my younger years. I well remember going to a bank as a young man and asking if I could borrow £500 to buy an old car—I was a student at the time. The manager, a bit like Captain Mainwaring in character, invited me in, gave me a glass of sherry, interrogated me for half an hour and eventually said, “Yes, I think we can probably lend you the £500.” Imagine that scene now. At best, you would have an online connection with someone remotely situated—

You wouldn’t get a car for 500 quid though, John!

I think my right hon. Friend is referring to the £500 he still owes me from the days when I used to work for him. The point is that nowadays the connection between customers and suppliers has become at best detached and at worst remote. As I say, now you would have a conversation with some remotely situated person who knows nothing about you or your circumstances, and probably cares less.

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

I will happily give way. Is it about the £500?

Yes—without interest. I agree with my right hon. Friend. I also agree about something else, which is that people do not realise that the really big global multinationals, for example Amazon, do not really make their profits on what they sell. They hold your data and that is what they really sell, subsequently. That is where they make their money and their profit. You derive no income from that data, but they make a lot of money off the back of it. To try to break that process down and make things more local, we have to start with what we have all been complicit in, which is the idea of getting something for nothing. It is not for nothing—there is a cost.

My right hon. Friend, as ever, makes an apposite comment. The trading of data by big businesses has become a business in itself, in the way that he sets out. By contrast, we need firms to practise responsibility, not parrot slogans and virtue signal. They concentrate power and wealth with little regard to the community in which they sit, or even the country in which they are situated.

I commend the right hon. Gentleman. He is a friend to us all in this Chamber and we all love him because of the wisdom he brings to it. He is also a good friend to Northern Ireland. I say that because he will be very pleased when he hears about what we are doing in Northern Ireland. The Northern Ireland better regulation strategy requires Departments to undertake and publish a regulatory impact assessment when considering new policy proposals or amendments to existing policy that may impact on businesses and to carry out a microbusiness test to assess the impact on businesses of fewer than five employees. Does he not agree, understanding what we are doing in Northern Ireland, that with increased regulation must come increased co-operation to secure better business, which benefits us all—the very thing he is trying to achieve?

As ever, the hon. Gentleman makes an apposite and worthy contribution to our considerations. I simply say this to the Minister. The Government have a lot of power in all kinds of ways. They certainly have the power to regulate the kinds of unfair practices I have begun to set out, but they also have power as a customer. Government procurement has never, under successive Governments, been used as well as it might be to support British businesses, and in particular British small businesses. My challenge to the Minister is to look at that again. Let us look at how the Government, as a huge customer of all kinds of businesses, can support small and medium-sized firms. Decades of non-intervention, driven by the mistaken belief in the triumph of liberal economics, have resulted in extraordinary numbers of foreign takeovers of British firms. It is also a matter of who owns these corporate giants and overseas companies that own our critical national infrastructure. The Government recently approved the Vodafone-Three merger, and the latter company is owned by a Hong Kong-based conglomerate. I wonder how closely the Competition and Markets Authority looked into the owners and leadership of Three’s parent company, the CK group, and I wonder whether that group has ties with the Chinese state—perhaps the Minister can inform us tonight. This merger must not become yet another corporate bonanza for shareholders at the expense of our national interest and the common good. I sought this debate in particular following a meeting with a constituent who was previously a Vodafone franchisee, along with others from across the country. I am mindful, Madam Deputy Speaker, of a legal case involving those Vodafone franchisees; I have taken advice from the Table Office and amended my speech heavily as a result. However, I do think it is important to set out some of the context, in the broad terms that I have described, which relates to the behaviour of large companies that adopt the franchise model.

I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on securing this debate. I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, in particular my trade union membership. I wonder whether he shares my view that the merger between Vodafone and Three will have real consequences for both pricing for customers and job losses in Britain.

That is certainly the risk. I think mergers more generally need to be looked at closely. It is why we have the Competition and Markets Authority, and why these things are indeed considered in the terms I have described. More recently, of course, as my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) will know—as a former member of the Intelligence and Security Committee, of which I remain a member—the Government introduced other legislation in respect of security, large businesses, mergers and all kinds of similar and related matters. It is important to gauge the national interest in all kinds of ways when one considers business activity.

However, I will say no more about that, as it would be digressing from my main theme, and I can see an eagerness to intervene—I give way to my neighbour.

I am most grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. He makes a powerful case about the differences between small businesses, entrepreneurs, franchisees and the big corporates. Does he share my concern that franchisees suffer the risk of what is essentially corporate bullying from the mega-companies—the likes, potentially, of Vodafone—and that they do not have any form of umbrella regulatory comfort? Entities such as the British Franchise Association may sound effective, but they are actually toothless in the face of such corporate bullying.

I have worked closely with the hon. Gentleman—as ever, he and I are on the same page here. He is absolutely right that franchising can be used as a method to exaggerate the power of the business at the heart of the franchise and to weaken the position of franchisees. My assertion is that that is common and is particular in the case of Vodafone.

I will give way to the hon. Member for North Durham (Luke Akehurst) and then to my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith).

I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on securing this important Adjournment debate. Like him, I have met Vodafone franchisees in my constituency, particularly the Chester-Le-Street former franchise holder, whom I met again today. I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for setting out the legal advice he has received on the ongoing case, and I will therefore be careful about what I say. I think there are major corporates that treat their franchisees very badly; they sign them up on one set of terms—one rate card—and then change the goalposts, and then, when people dissent and complain about that, they find their franchises withdrawn and lose their investment, after they have put a great deal into that corporate giant. I think this is a matter that will in the near future require ministerial attention. I thank the right hon. Gentleman very much for bringing this to the House’s attention.

I give way to my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green.

I need not detain my right hon. Friend for long, but I very much supported the unions’ position on this, as I thought this was wrong at the time. Without straying into the issues of the bids, we should consider organisations such as CK from China. It now has links with and control over UK Power Networks, Northumbrian Water, Wales and West Utilities, and Eversholt Rail. The network it has now is intriguing, which is hugely around the power and communications networks. All of those are now falling into the hands of conglomerates that have nothing to do with the UK, but that are linked to Governments of a different country. This is the big problem we face: it is not that we do not like big businesses; it is just that so often now they operate from outside our legal empowerment.

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend, who takes a great interest in these matters, and that is precisely why I posed the earlier question to the Minister about how closely he and others had looked at that merger. I will say no more about it than that, but it does seem to me to be a legitimate question to ask: were those things considered in this particular case, and how are they generally considered? If my right hon. Friend is right that there are threats that result from this, under existing legislation and regulation it is perfectly possible for the Government to become involved in these kinds of commercial affairs.

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

I will give way once more and then will make a little more progress.

May I put on record that I did not use the term “right hon.” in my earlier intervention on the right hon. Gentleman and wish to correct that? Also, the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) made a very important point about bigger businesses that operate outside the UK perhaps in some cases abusing their position. On a lighter note, may I encourage him to join a trade union? I would be happy to supply him with a membership form.

I am again grateful to the hon. Gentleman. It seems to me that there is a mood across the House tonight that more must be done. This Minister, as an experienced Member of the House, will have gathered that that mood could easily, from this small beginning, become a crescendo that might endanger the very safety of his office and the Government as a whole, so let us hope that this is the beginning of a journey, for both the Government and the Minister, towards a regime that counters the very things that have been described by Members across the House.

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Because I am a long-standing friend of the hon. Gentleman, I will certainly give way to him, but then I must make progress.

I am very grateful to the right hon. Gentleman, who does the House a favour in his work tonight. I should first declare an interest, as I have a close relative who works for the Competition and Markets Authority. I do not wish to comment on competition and mergers, though I would like to ask the right hon. Gentleman to join me in supporting the Government’s work. I believe that Ministers are shortly to do some further work to offer greater support to small businesses in terms of opening up Government procurement and in other matters. Like the right hon. Gentleman, in my own constituency I am a keen supporter of small business, and my own small business competition has provided a great deal of recognition for businesses, whether local florists, those repairing small musical instruments, people providing other services, and indeed many other forms of small business. So I do want to commend the broad thrust of the right hon. Gentleman’s work tonight, although I do not want to comment on the CMA.

I am most grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s support. During the pandemic, the UK Government introduced the business rates relief package, which allowed businesses with commercial leases to claim relief on their business rates. That was designed to help firms with physical stores compensate for lost footfall during the lockdowns, and it was an essential lifeline to those smaller businesses. This automatically applied to businesses through local councils. From 11 March 2020 to June 2021 the relief was 100% with no cash cap, and ratepayers with more than one property were entitled to relief for each eligible property. Franchisees were eligible to receive this relief, and it would have been automatically applied to stores operated by companies such as Vodafone and not through the franchise programme. It is worth noting that some corporations that benefited from that scheme, such as Tesco—although I hold no candle for Tesco generally—have since returned the money to the Government. The question is how Vodafone used that money: did it achieve its original purpose—I would be interested to hear the Minister’s answer to that question—or was it redirected in some way that was out of tune with the Government’s intention and the proper purpose? It is worth noting that that was available not only to Vodafone, but to all those organisations that had franchises. I wonder how other organisations handled the matter and how that compares with the circumstances surrounding Vodafone. The important thing to consider as we debate these matters is that the franchisees are small business owners with families—this was important to them. Business rates relief was of huge significance and made a meaningful difference to people, as intended by the Chancellor at the time, my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond and Northallerton (Rishi Sunak). The Government’s stated purpose for covid-19 business relief was to assist small businesses to carry on trading at a financially difficult time when profits in bricks and mortar shops were much reduced. The question is, was that the reality? The fact that the Government later introduced caps on the relief indicates that it was intended to help small businesses—those to whom £100,000 makes a great difference—not to subsidise large globalist corporations with hundreds of stores and access to other types of relief. What is the Minister’s assessment of how that kind of funding was used during the covid pandemic? Too often, franchisees’ payments from those who franchise them are cut drastically and with little or no explanation. Contracts are often terminated with just a few days’ notice and stores repossessed with little notice, often without valid reasons for doing so, leaving debts and loans to be repaid with no income. Franchisees claim that they faced fines and clawbacks that were grossly disproportionate to the errors in question. In some cases, the errors that led to fines were the results of failures in major corporation systems, yet the financial burden was often unfairly placed on franchisees. Communications raising serious concerns, though made, were often unanswered and pressing issues were ignored for long periods of time, leaving franchisees without support or resolution to their problems. Moreover, it has emerged that whistleblowers had warned a series of senior Vodafone executives that scores of its franchise store owners face financial ruin. What steps are the Government taking to regulate corporate businesses’ relationship with their franchisees? As I say, we are not speaking of powerful businesses with deep legal departments and balance sheets to absorb losses but ordinary people—mothers, fathers, sons and daughters—who saw an opportunity when they became a franchisee to build a meaningful business of their own under the banner of a global household name and to make a difference to their family, their community and the towns in which they are situated. People put their savings, their homes and their reputations on the line because they believe that a franchise agreement with a company such as Vodafone—there are others too—would be safe and secure. Last month, the Competition and Markets Authority confirmed the merger of Vodafone and Three. Will the Minister confirm that the matter of the problems with franchisees were discussed ahead of that merger being approved? Indeed, more broadly, can such a merger really be said to benefit the British public, given that it is forecast to cost 1,600 UK jobs and that evidence from overseas shows that countries with fewer mobile phone operators tend to charge higher prices to consumers? Will the Minister confirm what steps the Government are taking to investigate allegations of inappropriate use of Government relief during the covid pandemic, specifically in relation to businesses with franchisees? Will the Minister confirm that all allegations of misappropriation of Government relief schemes intended for franchisees should be investigated as part of the inquiry into covid by the covid commissioner? Will the Minister urge banks to show leniency and support to those franchisees facing financial distress, and will he commit to looking afresh at the lack of enforceable regulations governing franchiser conduct? A key lesson from the Post Office scandal is that we must not allow the sophisticated power of a corporate body, or the impression created by an impressive balance sheet, to persuade us to ignore the voices of less powerful individuals who speak out. Many franchisees have given up stable jobs. Some have taken out personal loans, and some have remortgaged their home. They train staff, open stores, serve customers, and are told by the big business that they are partners; but when the going gets rough, when the commission cuts come with little warning, when franchisees’ performance plummets due to decisions beyond their control, and when stores are repossessed with inadequate notice, they are left out on their own, high and dry. No lifeline, no dialogue—just silence from the corporations that they once trusted. I cannot believe that this Minister does not feel as I do about corporate malpractice—about greedy, soulless, heartless firms that act irresponsibly and hide behind the high wall of their substance. Governments have a duty not only to promote entrepreneurship and business, but to protect entrepreneurs and ensure that businesses do not take unfair advantage of their staff. We must call time on the era of corporate giants using legal structures not as a framework for partnership, but as a shield for avoidance—for avoiding responsibility and decency. Brands that trade on their reputation and public trust must be held accountable for the actions that they take that cause real harm. We must move away from a globalist, faceless corporate model that has enriched a few, and towards a different kind of economic order, in which we shorten supply lines, encourage small and medium-sized businesses, and understand that economics must serve a civil purpose. I call that fraternal economics —an economics in which community and economic activity are bound together in a common cause. We can build that kind of economic future, but it requires Government to know when to step forward to support business, and when to step back and not suffocate entrepreneurship. That future is within our grasp, but it will require this Government—perhaps any Government —to think afresh about the power balance between large, faceless businesses, and smaller entrepreneurs. They are ordinary people, like most of us, I guess, who simply want to get on and do the best for their family and their community. I know which side I am on. I am on the side of those people, because I know that they make so much difference in my constituency, and across the whole of our kingdom.

18:13:00

In the usual way, I thank the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) for securing this debate. Having crossed swords with him when our positions were reversed, I approached this debate with particular wariness, not least because he has assembled a very distinguished cross-party group of Members to participate in this debate. We heard from not only the right hon. Gentleman, but the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith), my hon. Friends the Members for Stockport (Navendu Mishra), for North Durham (Luke Akehurst) and for Reading Central (Matt Rodda), and the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Richard Tice). Each of them made important points. I very much agreed with the opening remarks of the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings about small and medium-sized businesses being the backbone of our communities. They are important; they are fundamental to the strength of each of our constituencies. The Government are determined to do much more to support our SMEs going forward. That is why, on the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Reading Central, we will publish a strategy for supporting SMEs. The right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings was right that we as a country should do more to celebrate our entrepreneurs and to champion their interests. They are brave; they are risk takers; they create wealth; and they make all our communities better and richer. We are determined to encourage more people to come forward as entrepreneurs, to take risks and succeed, and to grow businesses. We have already taken a number of measures to support SMEs. The Secretary of State for Business and Trade has already committed to establishing a business growth service inspired by the US Small Business Administration. That is why one of the outcomes of the spending review was a two-thirds increase in the capacity of the British Business Bank. The vast majority of that funding will go to help tackle the considerable challenges that SMEs face in accessing the right forms of financial support. The right hon. Gentleman rightly raised the issue of access to public procurement for British SMEs. I am sympathetic about the need to open up public procurement to SMEs. Again, we will have more to say on that in the small business strategy, when it is published shortly. Cabinet Office colleagues are very much working in this space, too. The right hon. Gentleman also rightly raised the matter of the difficulties that small and medium-sized businesses face when legal issues arise. Again, we will have more to say on that in the small business strategy shortly. Towards the end of his remarks, he made a powerful link to an appalling miscarriage of justice: the scandal of how the Post Office treated its sub-postmasters. There are many lessons to learn from that. I hope that he will take confidence from the Government’s determination to do that when he sees the Green Paper on the future of the Post Office, which we are seeking to bring forward. I am sure that the whole House appreciates the work that Sir Wyn Williams is doing to draw conclusions about what went wrong in the scandal, and about what more we need to do to learn the lessons and ensure that nothing like that ever happens again.

I thank the hon. Gentleman for the way in which he is responding. There is a close parallel between the way the Post Office is constructed—its business arrangement, and the connection between independent post offices and the centre—and the matters that I described. Will he ensure that his small business strategy includes something on franchising? That is a really important part of getting right our approach to regulation on the relationship between smaller businesses and corporate giants.

I have already given a flavour of what might be in the small business strategy. I will leave the right hon. Gentleman to wait a little longer, if I may—he will have to forgive me—before he sees the strategy in full. Let me come to the substance of the right hon. Gentleman’s concern. He rightly and understandably mentioned the experiences of a number of franchise operators who allege mistreatment and being badly let down by Vodafone during covid. No one in the Chamber will have failed to have been moved by those stories. I have read a number of them in correspondence from colleagues on both sides of the House. There are, without question, serious allegations being levelled at Vodafone. As the right hon. Gentleman said, and as I am sure he will understand, I am unable to comment on ongoing legal disputes, but I will respond on behalf of the Government as best I can, given the ongoing nature of the case. Until now, there has not been sustained concern about the quality or effectiveness of the self-regulation of franchises in general. However, I recognise that this case has raised concerns across the House, and I will track very carefully what happens in this case, the final outcome, and the conclusion of any court case. As hon. Members will no doubt be aware, franchising is growing in the UK, and it makes a big contribution to our economy, at just over £19 billion annually, according to the latest British Franchise Association survey. The franchising industry is covered by the same general protections in law as other businesses, and I will come on to some of those in a moment. In addition, the franchising industry also effectively self-regulates through the British Franchise Association, which has a code of ethics, and the Quality Franchise Association, which provides a code of conduct. On the whole, as the House will recognise, there are significant advantages to self-regulation: greater flexibility and responsiveness, and lower costs.

Is the Minister aware—this is my understanding from the franchisees—that Vodafone left the BFA, and walked away from its self-regulatory framework and code of conduct?

My hon. Friend will forgive me, but I will not comment on the particular circumstances of Vodafone and its relationship with franchisees in general, or those former franchisees who are bringing court action. However, I note his comment.

I have worked with the Minister on a number of issues relating to his ministerial role, and he has always been helpful and proactive. As he is representing His Majesty’s Government, does he feel that there is a need to legislate on this issue, and that the code of conduct simply does not go far enough? Also, as my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Luke Akehurst) has just said, there might be cases of larger corporations opting in and out as and when it suits them.

As I said, I recognise that this case has raised concerns across the House about the quality and effectiveness of the legislation that governs franchisees and, indeed, other businesses, and about the arrangements around franchisees, and their relationships. As I say, up to now, we have not had significant representations that the quality of regulation of franchises is not adequate. However, I recognise the concerns across the House that this case has brought up, and as a result, I will track very carefully how the court case unfolds. I was noting the advantages that, on occasion, self-regulation brings. They include freedom when it comes to contracting. Individuals and businesses have the right to enter into agreements and set their own terms, free from unnecessary Government interference. That freedom allows franchise agreements to be tailored to individual needs. People can set up shop more easily on the high street or elsewhere with the power of a big brand behind them. On the whole, self-regulation also allows the franchise industry to set standards and guidelines based on deep, industry-specific expertise. It allows the industry to adapt more quickly to market changes, too. It is my understanding that the franchise agreements are the main instruments governing the relationship between franchisors and franchisees. Those agreements normally cover key issues such as fees, territory rights, contract duration and dispute resolution mechanisms. The Government of course encourage anyone entering a business contract such as a franchise to seek independent legal advice before agreeing to the terms and conditions laid out in those agreements. I have talked a little bit about self-regulation and its benefits, and I alluded earlier to the fact that there are existing protections in law that cover all businesses, including franchises. For example, under the Misrepresentation Act 1967, anyone who has entered into a contract as a result of misrepresentation may be able to rescind the contract and claim damages. Misrepresentation is a false statement by one party to another that induces that person to enter the contract. Ultimately, it would be for the courts to decide whether a misrepresentation had occurred and what the remedy would be. There are other forms of legislation, too, including the Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977, which may apply to business-to-business contracts. That references the application of a reasonableness test, but that again is a matter for dedicated legal advice.

The Minister is absolutely right, of course. Contract law is well established and business contracts are enforceable in the way that he sets out, but the problem with franchising is that it is a hierarchical relationship that creates a kind of dependency. The franchisee is dependent on the larger business, so there is an in-built advantage if that larger business is inclined to be permissive in the way that it applies the terms of the contract, or even varies its terms. The parallel I drew in my speech was with supermarkets and primary producers. The supermarkets have so much power that the primary producer is implicitly weakened in that commercial relationship.

The right hon. Gentleman made a very interesting speech with a series of interesting analogies, and I have noted those and the points that he made. As I have said, I will track this particular court case and its conclusions. I always try to make myself available when hon. and right hon. Members want to discuss particular issues that are pertinent to my brief, and as things unfold, I make that offer to the right hon. Gentleman too. I should stress again that only the courts can really decide on the application of contractual terms. It is absolutely right that affected businesses seek independent legal advice on the particular circumstances of their situation. As the right hon. Gentleman will be fully aware, legislation cannot prevent wrongdoing. It can deter and it can punish, but only after the event. It is important for companies, obviously, to conduct business fairly. We already have rules that encourage this, whether in relation to criminal offences of fraud, audit requirements or prompt payment reporting, which my Department has begun to strengthen and on which we will publish further proposals shortly. I am sure the right hon. Gentleman will agree that investors and the public expect and deserve access to truthful reporting from our most important businesses on their finances and related issues. This is critical for trust, and ultimately it is critical for economic growth. That is why, through the audit and corporate governance reform Bill, we are developing legislation to uphold standards and the independent scrutiny of companies’ accounts while ensuring real accountability for company directors. Section 172 of the Companies Act 2006 already requires company directors to frame regard in their decision making to a wide range of stakeholder interests. That includes the impact of the company’s operations on the wider community. It also requires directors to have regard to the desirability of the company maintaining a reputation for high standards of business conduct. This requirement applies to a company’s business transactions, including the treatment of franchisees. Large companies must report annually on how their directors have complied with these requirements. Taken together, the section 172 duty helps to provide assurance that companies are run responsibly and that directors are mindful of the impact of their decision making beyond the company and its shareholders. The right hon. Gentleman touched on the additional regulation of franchises and the wider franchise model. As he will know, this Government are dedicated to implementing an ambitious regulatory reform agenda. In March, we published our action plan for regulation, outlining changes to streamline rules and regulations to support growth. While that plan includes a clear commitment to cut regulatory administrative costs for business by 25%, it also includes a commitment to strengthening accountability for regulators. That includes simplifying their duties to ensure that the regulatory environment focuses on growth, investment and, crucially, transparency. Our modern industrial strategy also includes an ambitious package of regulatory reforms that will support our growth-driving sectors and the wider economy, but as we stated at its launch, that is not the end of the journey; it is just the beginning. Where there are changes that we can make to increase the UK’s economic resilience and channel support to the most productive parts of our economy, we want to continue to work with Members across this House to implement them. In conclusion, let me thank the right hon. Gentleman and other hon. Members who have participated in the debate. Franchise regulation is a complex and difficult issue and, as I have said, this particular case has raised concerns across the House. As I promised, I will continue to look closely at how the case develops and ultimately what conclusions are reached. I am happy to continue conversations about this case and its implications outside the Chamber. Question put and agreed to.

18:31:00