Greensill Capital

Anneliese Dodds Excerpts

Tuesday 13th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East) (Lab/Co-op)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will make a statement on the process by which Greensill Capital was approved as a lender for the coronavirus large business interruption loan scheme.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Paul Scully)]

Greensill Capital (UK) Ltd was approved by the British Business Bank for the coronavirus business interruption loan scheme and the coronavirus large business interruption loan scheme last year in accordance with the bank’s published guidance on accreditation. All decisions taken by the bank were made independently and in accordance with the bank’s usual procedure.

The criteria by which the decisions were made were based on those used in the existing enterprise finance guarantee scheme, dating back from 2009, and were set out in the CLBILS request for proposals, which was a publicly available document. These criteria included minimum requirements such as the ability to demonstrate a track record of lending to larger enterprises, provision of evidence-based forecasts, the ability to demonstrate sufficient capital available to meet the lending forecasts, a viable business model, robust operations and systems, that the proposed lending will not have unreasonable lender-levied fees and interest, and that the lender has all the necessary regulations, licences, authorisations and permissions to operate the scheme. All accredited lenders are subject to regular audit by the bank to ensure their compliance with scheme rules.

Following analysis of loan data as part of its standard due diligence, the bank opened an investigation into Greensill Capital’s compliance with the terms of the scheme in October 2020 and informed the Government of this on 9 October. That investigation is continuing and the Government’s obligations as guarantor under the CLBILS guarantee are suspended on a precautionary basis. It would not be appropriate to comment further on the investigation at this time.

[Anneliese Dodds]

I start by paying tribute to the Duke of Edinburgh, who was an extraordinary public servant. My thoughts today are with the Queen and the rest of the royal family as we all mourn his passing. They are also with the friends and family of Cheryl Gillan, and I would like to associate myself with the very moving tributes that we quite rightly heard a few moments ago.

I welcome the Minister’s presence, but it was the Chancellor who needed to come to the House today; the Chancellor who told David Cameron that he would “push” his team to amend emergency loan schemes to suit Cameron’s new employer; the Chancellor whose officials met with Greensill 10 times; the Chancellor who took the credit for Government business loan schemes when they were in the headlines and, indeed, who personally announced those schemes. Yet the Chancellor is frit to put his name to those loan schemes today. He has just spent £600,000 on communications. I would have thought that that would extend to communicating with Parliament. In the Chancellor’s absence, let me ask: what was the alternative that the Chancellor pushed his team to explore after David Cameron texted him? What discussions did the Government have with the British Business Bank about Greensill’s access to CLBILS after it had already been rejected for the covid corporate financing facility? Were the criteria for CLBILS amended so that Greensill could access the scheme? Why was Greensill the only supply chain finance firm accredited for CLBILS, and what due diligence was done?

Hundreds of millions of pounds of public money were put at risk by giving Greensill access to this scheme. With Greensill’s collapse, thousands of jobs—in Rotherham, Hartlepool and right across the country—have been put at risk. Those workers and taxpayers across the country deserve answers. The Chancellor said that he would “level with” the public. Why is he running scared of levelling with them on the Greensill scandal?

[Paul Scully]

I associate myself with the hon. Member’s words about the Duke of Edinburgh and, of course, our colleague Cheryl Gillan, both of whom will be sorely missed.

The Chancellor wrote to the hon. Member last week with a comprehensive response to her questions regarding engagement between Greensill and HM Treasury. The Prime Minister has asked Nigel Boardman to conduct a review to look into the decisions taken around the development and use of supply chain finance and the associated schemes in Government—especially the role of Lex Greensill and Greensill Capital—and to set out any findings as necessary. The Government recognise the interest in the matter. It is right that we now let that review happen.

In the interests of transparency, the Chancellor has provided all the messages that were sent from him to David Cameron on this matter; they relate exclusively to Greensill’s proposals for the covid corporate financing facility. The Chancellor is right to push officials, as we all have, to explore all ways of capital getting to businesses—large and small. That is what all Members of this House were asking and demanding the Government to do at that particular point. It is important to remember that the Chancellor rejected the idea that he should rewrite the CCFF to include any banks.

The reason the Chancellor is not here is that the question is about the CLBILS. I suggest to the hon. Lady that she asks her question in a different forum or that she asks a different question, because the coronavirus large business interruption loan scheme, to which this question pertains, is administered by the British Business Bank. The Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy is the sole shareholder in the bank. As such, the responsibility for the delivery of the scheme sits with BEIS. The accreditation process for any of the covid loan schemes is run independently by the British Business Bank; neither BEIS nor HM Treasury had a role or were involved in the CLBILS accreditation decision for Greensill.

There were two other non-bank lenders accredited under the CLBILS, with over 75 accredited for the CBILS. It was an important feature of the covid loan schemes that there was a diversity of lenders to ensure a broad range of choice for borrowers, enabling them to access the finance they needed to survive and recover from the pandemic. Greensill was not accredited to provide supply chain finance through the CLBILS. It was only accredited to provide invoice finance, term loans and revolving credit facilities.

Planning for the Future

Anneliese Dodds Excerpts

Thursday 12th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

The new affordable homes programme, which we announced yesterday, will be over £12 billion. We have not yet finalised the details, but will set them out shortly. They will show the proportion of those homes that will be for different tenures, from shared ownership and affordable rent to social rent. We want a significant increase in the number of those homes in the social rent category. I hope we can make a positive announcement on that shortly, when we have finalised the details, having spoken to and listened to the sector.

I am very sympathetic to the argument that my hon. Friend has made in the past about properties that are not eligible for right to buy and, indeed, about some councils and housing associations that are making it more difficult. I would like to work with him to take action on that. We need to ensure that the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, takes housing seriously. As I have said before, we will never be able to meet our housing targets and ambitions as a country unless London pulls its weight, and I am afraid that at the moment we have a Mayor whose ambitions are way below what we should all be expecting at every level of the market. As long as he continues in place, which I hope is not for very much longer, the Mayor needs to get building in London.

[Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Secretary of State has just been talking about the delivery of homes for social rent, but I would like to ask him about the impact of two of his Government’s policies on the delivery of homes for social rent. The first is yesterday’s changes to the Public Works Loan Board when it comes to the delivery of homes for social rent by local housing companies. The second is the First Homes policy, which, because it is delivered through section 106 as it is currently designed, is likely to lead to a reduction in the production of homes for social rent by local councils. What is his response?

[Robert Jenrick]

The hon. Lady will know as a follower of Treasury matters that what we announced yesterday in the Budget with reform of the Public Works Loan Board makes it cheaper for councils to borrow to invest in housing and regeneration. I hope that she will support the changes that we made. The changes we are making to the PWLB will make it harder for councils to waste money on speculative investments outside of their boundaries and get highly indebted, and make it easier to spend money on things that really matter. We have lifted the housing revenue account borrowing cap, and many councils across the country are responding to that and building council houses at a pace that we have not seen for many years, as was reflected in the statistics I gave earlier. We built more council houses last year than we have done for many years, and I hope that her local council in Oxford will do the same, if that is what she wishes.

Housing and Planning

Anneliese Dodds Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd March 2020 Westminster Hall

[Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East) (Lab/Co-op)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Harborough (Neil O’Brien) on securing this debate. I have two specific and brief questions for the Minister. The first concerns the first homes scheme. The Government’s consultation document on the scheme, released last month, includes an extraordinary sentence. It states:

“We are mindful of the trade-off between the level of ambition for First Homes, funded through developer contributions, and the supply of other affordable housing tenures.”

Yet, astonishingly, the consultation mandates that section 106 must be used to deliver first homes, rather than asking whether that is appropriate in the first place. We should not use section 106 contributions for this, especially at the late stage when many local plans have just been concluded or are in contention, and without any ameliorative action to preserve local councils’ abilities to facilitate council and other social housing.

I note that my own local authority has already been prevented by the Government’s planning inspectorate from requiring developer contributions to social homes from smaller sites. There are already problems, which will be massively exacerbated if the first homes scheme is ruled out in such a way. Will the Minister commit to conduct a proper impact assessment on the impact of the first homes proposal on the provision of new social homes? Secondly, on the Oxford-Cambridge arc, some contest the need to have any additional housing along the arc. I am not one of them, and I very much concurred with some of the words spoken by the hon. Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke (Jack Lopresti) when it comes to the need for additional housing and looking at the issue in a manner that is not hypocritical.

As for the arc, I am astonished that the Government have not provided even a signal or an expectation on two critical issues: first, the proportion of new homes, which should be available for social rent and genuinely affordable; and secondly, the energy efficiency and broader environmental performance of those new homes. It is not good enough to suggest that local authorities will deal with all the issues. The Oxford-Cambridge arc is a central Government programme, staffed with dozens of central Government civil servants, and central Government have the power, should they wish to use it, to ensure that the new homes are genuinely affordable, that they include many social homes, and that they are sustainable.

Finally, will the Minister please commit to determining two targets or standards, or even just expectations, for the arc for the percentage of new homes that should be affordable, including social homes, and for the expected environmental performance of the homes?

Homelessness

Anneliese Dodds Excerpts

Wednesday 29th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East) (Lab/Co-op)]

In the brief time I have available—I am very sorry the Secretary of State is leaving, just as I am starting to speak—I want to focus on the Government’s approach to delivering directly funded services for rough sleepers. I am sure we could all talk a lot about the drivers of rough sleeping, but I want to focus on the approach to directly funding those services, which is very problematic. It is based on a very short-term approach, which is failing many people who need those services. I will set out why in the time I have left.

I welcomed the stamp duty surcharge, especially once the Government had resiled from their previous decision to slash the amount coming from it by two thirds. At least it has been put back to the previous amount. I welcomed it because I thought it would lead to a situation where we would not have a bidding-led system of a pot into which different bodies have to bid for very short-term funded projects. But no, we seem to have the same approach now. The problem is that it does not lead to reliable support for projects that we know work. For example, in Oxford we have received funds from the rough sleeper initiative and the rapid rehousing pathway. I am really grateful for them—of course I am—but they are only for a year or 18 months. We have had absolutely brilliant projects— the hub at Bonn Square and the Trailblazer project—but they were funded only for the short term. Virtually by the time staff had been taken on and services got going, the funding was evaporating.

Oxford City Council has just set up a brilliant facility, Floyds Row, investing £2 million in capital—of course, it is not the authority that should be funding it in the first place, but it has done so because of the rough sleeping crisis we have in Oxford—but it will now be at the behest of finding different pots of short-term funding to deliver the running of that facility, as is St Mungo’s, which will be helping with it. So much effort is going into chasing around after short-term funds—I could not have agreed more with what my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) said about the situation there. This is really problematic not just for the staff who are trying to deliver excellent services without knowing whether they will be employed in the future, but for the users. We have the data and we know the evidence. We know that when the same workers are delivering services, especially to those who are hardest to reach, they are far more effective. I would be delighted to send the Minister evidence from the Old Fire Station, working with Crisis, which shows that clearly in black and white. We need that continuity of provision. If he reports back on anything at the end of the debate, please deal with the issue of the funding being too short term.