Banking Commission Report

Andrea Leadsom Excerpts

Monday 19th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

At times it feels like the current war as well. I do not think that the effects of the financial crisis have disappeared from our economy. Through these proposals, we are taking steps better to protect British taxpayers in the future. There is a decent implementation period for some of the recommendations, such as the loss absorbency recommendations, precisely to take account of what is going on in funding markets. It would be pretty extraordinary if this country, after all that it went through in recent years, with the biggest bank bail-out in the entire world happening here, did not learn the lessons of what went wrong and try to protect people in future.

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

The Vickers proposals definitely make banks more robust and more resolvable, but does my right hon. Friend think that they will definitely be more competitive? Specifically, the stickiness of personal current accounts and SME accounts is a real problem. Will he consider the proposal for full account portability rather than this halfway house which just makes it faster to transfer one’s bank account?

[Mr Osborne]

There is a specific reference to full account portability in the report, as my hon. Friend will see when she reads it, and that is there partly because of the point that she made to me about it in the Treasury Committee. We will consider full account portability if the switching service that we introduce is not effective and does not deliver the expected consumer benefits.

Autumn Statement

Andrea Leadsom Excerpts

Tuesday 29th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

Let me explain to the right hon. Lady that what we are seeking to do is to get the pension funds investing in British infrastructure. We are not proposing to provide, in this respect, guarantees for these projects. There are some guarantees set out for specific Government infrastructure projects such as the Thames tidal waste tunnel. What I am talking about with the pension funds is not guaranteed projects like PFI; it is simply about trying to get private sector money invested in British infrastructure. [Interruption.] Let me explain, briefly.

We have Canadian and Australian pension funds investing in Britain, but not British pension funds investing on a sufficient scale. We are going to try to bring them together, through a private sector agreement, into vehicles where they can co-operate and then invest in infrastructure. This is not about the Government underwriting those investments; it is about trying to get the industry together to make private sector investments. There is a memorandum of understanding which sets out how this is done.

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

I welcome the Chancellor’s statement. It is a great shame that the shadow Chancellor appears to be living in a parallel universe to that of Government Members. Does my right hon. Friend agree that in view of his desire to set up a better and a stronger economy for the future, it would be a good idea to look again at the prospect of account portability in the banking system to create a truly free consumer choice for the future in terms of personal current accounts and small business lending?

[Mr Osborne]

I agree with my hon. Friend that that is a very important part of making sure that customers get the best possible deal. It was the part of the Vickers report that got the least coverage because of the interest in things like ring-fencing. We are determined to introduce changes that allow people to switch their current accounts very easily, and we hope to have them in place before the end of the Parliament.

Fuel Prices

Andrea Leadsom Excerpts

Tuesday 15th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Newton (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)]

This is an important issue that affects every home in my constituency. I add my thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) for securing this debate.

That appreciation is shared by my constituent Annalise Lucas from Cubert. She is a member of Network Cornwall, which is a network for female small business owners in Cornwall. Like many mums with small children, she balances work—running her costume design business—with looking after her family. Like many hard-working families in my constituency, Annalise and her husband, who works at Newquay Tretherras school, are finding the ever-increasing fuel prices, coupled with the higher costs of living in Cornwall, a real struggle.

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

Is my hon. Friend aware of the many young mothers who work part time and who struggle to afford the cost of filling their car to get to work?

European Budgets 2014 to 2020

Andrea Leadsom Excerpts

Tuesday 8th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hoban]

Let me make a bit more progress and I will take the right hon. Gentleman’s intervention in a short while.

The Commission also asked us to use as our starting point for a freeze—this is perhaps where the hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) has been confused by the Commission’s numbers—the level of spend planned in 2005, but we cannot ignore the fact that the global crisis has taken place since then. Every country has had to scale back its spending from pre-crisis days and the European Commission is no different.

The Commission can also do more to ensure that money is spent more wisely. We are leading the way on reforming financial management in the EU. For the first time in 17 years, we have refused to support the sign-off of the EU accounts. We are pushing for simpler, clearer rules on spending programmes that make it easier to spot fraud and error, and we have also raised our game at home to ensure that EU money spent here is spent properly and wisely.

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

Will the Financial Secretary give way?

[Mr William Cash (Stone) (Con)]

Will the Financial Secretary give way?

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Before the Minister gives way to the hon. Lady, I emphasise that, of course it is in the gift of the Minister to give way as he thinks fit, but the total time for the debate on this matter is only one and a half hours, and it would be a pity if Back Benchers were disappointed. I am sure that the Minister will tailor his remarks and his giving way accordingly.

[Andrea Leadsom]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I shall bear in mind your comments. I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. Does he agree that one of the most ridiculous wastes of money in this day and age, with tight budgets, is the European Parliament continuing to move between countries during the week, at enormous expense to British taxpayers?

Eurozone Crisis

Andrea Leadsom Excerpts

Thursday 3rd November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hoban]

I find the position adopted by Labour Members quite curious. They want us to be at the top table, yet they voted against the increase in our subscription to the IMF, so we would not be at the top table. I believe we have played an important role through European Councils by trying to push our eurozone partners to make progress on tackling problems in the eurozone. We are very clear that matters such as the completion of the single market, competition and financial services should be dealt with by all 27 member states, not by the 17. I believe that this Government are punching way above their weight.

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

If the remorseless logic of greater fiscal union proves to be true, can my hon. Friend tell us what steps he intends to take to ensure that Britain’s voice is still heard under QMV?

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrea Leadsom Excerpts

Tuesday 1st November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hoban]

Every reputable international organisation that talks about what is happening in the UK economy now recognises that the Government need to stick to the course, rather than throwing away the valuable credibility that we have gained as a consequence of tackling the mess left behind by the previous Government.

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that having our own currency is one of the keys to turning round our economy? Does he share my astonishment that the Labour party does not rule out joining the single currency?

[Mr Hoban]

It is remarkable, is it not, that when the Leader of the Opposition was asked whether a Labour Government would join the euro, his answer was:

“It depends how long I’m prime minister for.”

This Government have closed down the euro preparations that the Labour party set up, and that is why I think that we have taken the right decision to stay out of the euro and tackle our debt and deficit problems. That is why we have low interest rates, which help strengthen the recovery in this country.

Independent Banking Commission Report

Andrea Leadsom Excerpts

Monday 12th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

Yes, perhaps there are too many kitchen metaphors. The point I was making is that we are trying to clean up the mess.

We should not just assume that banking crashes happen every 70 or 100 years. We must hope that they will never happen at all, but we need to put in place the regulatory arrangements, capital requirements and structural changes that will ensure that the person who is in the hot seat the next time it happens, and has to do the job that the right hon. Member for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling) had to do, will have more tools available to him than the right hon. Gentleman had as Chancellor.

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

Regulation in the banking sector has already changed beyond all recognition. In my view, the best bit of that regulation is giving accountability back to the Bank of England. There is no doubt, however, that yet more regulation will have a cost. We can see from bank share prices now that investors already think that the future of the banks is not as glowing as it was. Does my right hon. Friend agree that in order for small and medium-sized enterprises and personal current account customers to benefit in the future, we need a more diversified banking sector and we need to encourage more competition and to go beyond what the Vickers commission is doing by promoting it through the Financial Conduct Authority as well as through our implementation of the Independent Commission on Banking proposals.

[Mr Osborne]

I hesitate to read out bank share prices, as they might have changed in the 45 minutes I have been on my feet The reaction from the banks today has not dramatically affected the prices of UK bank shares. There has not been a dramatic fall, nor indeed a dramatic rise. They have remained broadly flat—unlike those of French and German banks, which are very substantially down today. What that also suggests is that John Vickers—and, I would argue, the Government—did a good job in trying to price the proposals into the share price by giving clear signposts about the way in which we were going, so that it did not come as a big surprise. I completely agree with my hon. Friend about the Financial Conduct Authority. As a member of the Select Committee, she can look at some of the Vickers’ proposals potentially to change the FCA’s remit. We need to consider that, as do Members who are looking at the Bill.

Early Intervention

Andrea Leadsom Excerpts

Thursday 14th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Graham Allen (Nottingham North) (Lab)]

Early intervention not only requires no new net public expenditure, it is also the biggest deficit reduction programme that we have. If we implement it properly, it will produce results beyond the Chancellor’s wildest dreams. We need to change our default public expenditure culture, which is one of late intervention, to one of early intervention. Late intervention is expensive and not very effective. Early intervention, by contrast, is inexpensive and highly effective.

I shall give the House an example. Delivering the intensive health visiting service of the family nurse partnership to 115 teen mums and their babies in my constituency costs about the same as putting three 16-year-olds in a secure unit for a year—an average of two of whom, incidentally, will reoffend. Family nurse partnership services delivered in the first years of life can reduce the number of arrests at the age of 15 by 80%. So dealing with several hundred individuals and doing so effectively costs roughly the same amount as failing to deal effectively with three young people, 16-year-olds, later on in life.

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman and I are in huge agreement on this subject. Does he agree that more than 80% of long-term prison inmates suffer from problems that stem back to early infant attachment?

[Mr Allen]

Indeed, and the costs are absolutely enormous and continuing. They continue through the generations, whereas one effective early intervention costs only for the one occasion, does not need to be repeated and proves to be very effective.

I make many recommendations in my recent report for Her Majesty’s Government, “Early intervention: Smart Investment, Massive Savings”. The ones I would particularly like to talk about tonight involve the Treasury. I ask the Minister for her first thoughts on these recommendations. I am very grateful for the assistance I received from the Chancellor, the whole Treasury team and, indeed, Treasury officials—and, above all, from the Minister herself. She helped me in various ways—although the faults in the report are entirely my own—to make the second report a practical and pragmatic programme of work rather than a flight of fancy.

There are no magic bullets. This is all about a practical, long-running and consistent effort to try to bring social and emotional capability to our babies, children and young people, which will repay us over and over again throughout the life cycle, as we avoid the costs associated with drink and drug abuse, teenage pregnancy, a lifetime on welfare benefits, educational underachievement, and so on and so forth. That benefit can come from just a little bit of early investment.

The key relevant recommendations to the Treasury concern the comprehensive spending review; rebalancing central Government spending from late to early intervention; a Whitehall task and finish group, which I shall talk about; a serious proposal for departmental payments, introducing a payment-by-results system effectively across Whitehall; liberating our local authorities so that they can be our partners in pursuing early intervention policies; and using the 2012 Budget to incentivise early intervention investment. I propose to look at each of those in turn.

First, I have suggested that the Treasury consider theming the next CSR around early intervention. The usual cross-departmental effort that goes in ahead of every CSR should be directed at early intervention across all Departments. That includes the research programme and the evaluation, which should be used to assess what is being spent on early intervention by Departments, thus providing a baseline from which we can judge the costs, benefits and potential savings to taxpayers from early intervention policies and programmes.

This CSR preparation should also include commissioning long-range surveys, studies and longitudinal programmes so that we can add daily to the evidence base for early intervention and its role in saving massive amounts of taxpayers’ money from being captured by the long-term costs of failure. Above all, doing this in the CSR will symbolise the Government’s approach and the switch in philosophy to give strong signals to Departments throughout Whitehall and indeed in local areas. We will thus be demonstrating that we are moving from talking the talk to walking the walk.

I want to put on the record that it is evident from the discussions I have had with all parties and with all party leaders, including the Prime Minister, that there is a very strong desire to move—incrementally, admittedly—across this divide between our typical, traditional late intervention policies and early intervention. This is not just to save money; it will also help to make good many of the social failures that arise because we do not tackle problems early enough and let them get rooted before we start to invest money in them—often too little, too late.

The second issue is the rebalancing of funding in Departments. It is easy to demand big switches of financing from one place to another, but that is a pipe dream that we did not entertain in the report. What we did consider was the fact that we have spent billions of pounds, decade after decade, often with only marginal impacts on, in particular, the social and emotional capabilities of babies, children and young people, especially those in poorer areas and constituencies such as mine. We discussed how we might push back the spending and personnel juggernaut of late intervention, and start to invest, gently and incrementally, in early intervention.

A great deal of evidence was given to my inquiry. One of our proposals is a gentle shift—within departmental budgets, and involving no extra money—from late to early intervention. Following discussions with Departments, I propose—modestly, I hope—not a top-slicing of budgets to a pooled early intervention fund run by one Department or another, but a slow, incremental migration of funding, within existing budgets, from late to early intervention. I proposed that it should amount to just 1% a year, which is incredibly modest. It would be possible to move such spending slowly and relatively easily, and no additional spending by Departments would be required.

In education, for instance, an obvious way of using an existing function, organisation or budget head would be through the early intervention grant itself, which currently amounts to £2.2 billion. That would be a good home for the start of a transition from late to early intervention. Similarly, £55 billion is spent on children and children’s services in the United Kingdom. A minor adjustment, in percentage terms, made incrementally on an annual basis could begin to shift us from the costs of failure to investment in the success of our babies, children and young people.

The Department of Health, the Home Department and the Ministry of Justice already have machinery for such an incremental change. They run prevention programmes of various sorts, all of which could be steadily and progressively geared up. Such a reorientation of internal spending could also provide some of the resources needed to pay investors for the outcome-based contracts to which I referred in my report, and about which I shall say more later. It could be described as payment by results.

I also propose the establishment of a task and finish group. This may sound an internal, dry subject, but in preparing my report I discovered that although tremendous work is going on throughout Whitehall in different Departments, it is not always joined up; it does not always connect. People do not always know what the next Department is doing, for one reason or another. That is not a criticism of anyone working in those Departments or on those programmes—on the contrary, I was very impressed by the way in which all Departments set about their work—but it is a criticism of the fact that no Governments have co-ordinated such action to the level that I would like to see, a level that would add value if people all worked together.

I have suggested that the existing Cabinet Social Justice Committee should be given more teeth, and that it should have a task and finish group—perhaps with an independent chair, but that is a matter for Government to decide—which could offer an independent eye, and promote Government change via the Committee. Through consistency, long-termism and progress-chasing, it could achieve, through Whitehall, some of the important objectives and milestones that the Government may choose to set in the early intervention strategy that I proposed in my report.

Such a group should, as a matter of course, report to all party leaders to maintain what I hope is the helpful benchmark that has been set of establishing this as a non-party issue. I am delighted to pay tribute to those Members of all parties who have taken this issue so seriously, and the fact that the three main party leaders have kindly said good things about both the first and second reports underlines my belief that this is a non-party issue. Indeed, they have supplied quotes, expressing embarrassingly kind sentiments about the philosophy of early intervention, for the back page of each of the reports. What we now need to do is make a practical proposition, and I hope we can put into effect my recommendation of establishing an effective task and finish group.

Another Treasury-oriented recommendation is our proposal about the Treasury, Departments and local areas introducing a proper payments-by-results system, so that benefits can accrue to central and local government for investing in the right package of policies and getting external investors interested in this field. Central Government need to play a role in co-commissioning, or co-paying for, the outcomes set by local areas. Her Majesty’s Treasury and other Departments would therefore need to work at putting in place methods of accounting to ensure that future payments based on successful local outcomes are honoured. It is obviously a matter of great concern that local authorities feel, rightly or wrongly, that if they are successful they will be penalised by the withdrawal of other grants or financial assistance. When drawing up the contracts and talking to local authorities about this issue, we need to make it clear that their payments will be honoured when they reach the endgame of the payment-by-results exercise.

In my report I have outlined a number of areas where local authorities have an important role to play. I do not have time to go into them now, but one that would bear examination is the possibility of looking again at issuing a capitalisation directive to councils that will perhaps allow up to £500 million of early intervention spending to be capitalised, provided that it is funded through the local bond market. If one accepts, as the Government and the main political parties now seem to, that early intervention represents an essential investment in human capital for future generations, there is a strong case for allowing local authorities to finance that by using money in the same way as they would to finance a bridge or a building.

The final recommendation that the Treasury may want to think about now that my report is in the public domain is to do with the 2012 Budget and whether the Treasury can assess properly the possibilities of incentivising early intervention investment. It was clear from my review that tax incentives would be a popular and effective way of incentivising early intervention and social investment more generally. The possibility of creating a market in social investment and social finance is a prize indeed, and if we manage to create a social finance market within, perhaps, 10 years, that will be a measure of our success.

Of course everyone would like to have an incentive. I did not see it as my role to provide a set of demands to which Government had to say yes or no. However, I would like there to be a serious exercise before the Budget, so that the Government examine all possible ways of sucking into early intervention investment philanthropic, ethical business and retail investors and wholesale investors. That would be extremely helpful. I will say no more than let us learn from the creativity in other countries, such as tax credits in the Netherlands and Australia, and money to contribute to social impact bond payments in the USA. The US President has introduced rule changes so that money can be committed over longer periods than is commonplace in public contracts.

In conclusion, the Treasury often says, rightly, that having less money can drive us all to be more creative and to challenge the old ways and the old rules. One of the threads in the report is that this should apply equally to Government thinking, and to Treasury thinking in particular. Money is scarce, so ideas on how better to spend existing public funds should be encouraged and new sources of funding should be incentivised. Due diligence, which is commonplace in the private sector, should now be used at all levels of government to question the comparative costs of wasteful, late intervention versus early intervention alternatives. Levels of savings to be achieved should be an integral part of all public investment calculations. Short-term cuts that jeopardise massive long-term returns should, of course, be avoided. Rules and methods of working established in a different era, in a different public expenditure environment, need to be reviewed.

If we can do that, and if our friends in the Treasury can take some of these proposals seriously—as I know they would, as they made a strong contribution to my review—we will be on the verge of changing the spending culture in our country, moving from wasteful, expensive spending when problems are deep-seated to pre-emptive and preventive spending to help babies, children and young people develop the social and emotional capability that will see them realising their potential in the same way as we want to see our children realising theirs. This is an important field. In many ways, it is a slow burner, not one that heralds dramatic change. This is a field in which there must be a serious commitment to change public policy on behalf of all parties. If we do that, not only will the benefits to those children be immense, but the repayments to the taxpayer will be massive.

Finance (No. 3) Bill

Andrea Leadsom Excerpts

Tuesday 5th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hoban]

We have one of the most transparent disclosure regimes for banking salaries anywhere in the world. The measures we introduced as part of Project Merlin were more transparent and provide more information than in any comparable regime across the world. The Government have made real progress on tackling that issue.

We decided that we would lead the international debate and act unilaterally if necessary on the bank levy. Since we made our announcement, France and Germany have joined us in announcing such levies, and others have followed, including Hungary, Austria and Portugal. The hon. Gentleman made reference to the fact that the Dutch had announced a similar thing. Apparently, they believe that our design for a levy should be followed.

The hon. Gentleman talked about international comparisons. Even allowing for the larger size of the UK banking sector, the UK levy is larger than that of France or Germany. Different levies cannot be compared by looking just at headline rates; for example, the UK levy is focused on balance sheet liabilities, while the French levy is on risk-weighted assets. Furthermore, unlike the UK levy, the French levy does not apply to branches of foreign banks. Consequently, the French levy is expected to raise between €500 million to €1 billion a year, much less than the £2.5 billion we shall raise in the UK, a difference that cannot simply be explained away by the different sizes of our banking sectors. Moreover, unlike the UK, the French levy is deductable from their corporation tax liability. The hon. Gentleman said that the Government will not review the banking levy. If he looks carefully at the documentation, he will see that we are committed to reviewing it in 2013.

The levy is not the only tough action we have taken to ensure that banks pay their fair share of tax. The right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) was a member of the Treasury team when the previous Government introduced the code of practice on taxation for banks, but they utterly failed to get all the banks to sign up to it; only four of the big 15 banks had signed up to it by the time they left office.

While the previous Government talked a good story about tackling tax evasion and avoidance, we acted. By the end of November, all the top banks had adopted the code and by the time of the March Budget this year, 200 banks had adopted it. We have taken tough action to tackle tax planning issues and to ensure that banks pay a fair share in taxes to recognise the contribution they should make, given the risk they pose to the UK economy.

With amendment 13, tabled by the shadow Chancellor, the Opposition seek to reintroduce the bank payroll tax, which was introduced in the previous Parliament as a one-off interim measure ahead of changes in remuneration practices from corporate governance and regulatory reforms, and the previous Chancellor conceded that it could not be repeated. The net yield for the tax, accounting for the impact it would have had on income tax and national insurance contribution receipts, was £2.3 billion, which is less than we will raise from the bank levy this year, and less than we will raise from it next year, the year after and the year after that.

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the unintended consequence of the payroll tax was to push up salaries versus bonuses in the City, which is something that no Member wants to see?

Private Finance Initiative

Andrea Leadsom Excerpts

Thursday 23rd June 2011 Westminster Hall

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

The PFI is one of those incredibly important, but unutterably dull subjects, that make an awful lot of people’s eyes glaze over. It is rather astonishing that the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) is the only person, other than the shadow Minister, who is representing the Labour party here. I do not know whether that is because Labour Members are embarrassed about their hand in the mass of PFI projects that have cost the taxpayer so dearly, but it is interesting that only the hon. Lady and the shadow Minister are here from the Opposition, while so many Government Members are present.

I am a bit of a stuck record on this issue, but we have a complete lack of competition in the PFI world. Like others, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman) on being so diligent and tenacious in putting forward the taxpayer’s interests in the PFI debate. He and I have met a number of PFI providers together, and it was apparent that there was complete denial of the fact that there was anything resembling a lack of competition or that there might have been oligopolistic profits.

In his campaign, my hon. Friend has been careful to suggest a voluntary rebate—there is no compulsion. The hon. Member for Walthamstow would need to think carefully about trying retrospectively to change taxation rules or doing anything that smacked of changing the game for existing PFI deals, notwithstanding the need to ensure that we get better value for the taxpayer in deals going forward.

In my home county of Northamptonshire, we have what is believed to be the biggest schools PFI project in Europe, which incorporates 74 schools. At the time that the project was entered into, it really was the only game in town. However, it is incredibly important, albeit rather dull, to understand why PFI has been such a contentious subject and why it has resulted in unintended consequences, such as charges of £1,000 to change a power point.

The important thing to understand, which many taxpayers do not really understand, is why PFI contracts are so inflexible and expensive, and I want to take a moment to explain that very simply. PFI may involve a local education authority deciding to build a new school. The LEA will invite one of what turns out to be a fairly small group of builders to bid for the project. The building firm will go to a group of banks, which will look at what they can fund over perhaps 25 years. The banks will come back to the builder with a specific contract for delivery of the school and offer funding for the project, with the expectation that the LEA will start repaying the debt incurred in building the school only once the school is delivered and inhabited by children. Effectively, a special purpose company has been set up to build the school. The bank funds it, the building company organises it and the LEA takes it over on day one and starts repaying the debt. Inevitably, without a specific debt on the general obligations of the local education authority or on the UK, the beauty of the project was that it did not consolidate into our national debt picture. Of course, bearing in mind the dreadful mess of our economic situation left by the previous Government, there is no chance that we could now begin to consider only normal, conventional procurement. The potential for making loans against such projects, secured on the project itself, must remain—so we must get much cleverer about it.

[Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)]

Can the hon. Lady perhaps help with something that I have never understood about Labour’s obsession with the PFI? In general the Government can get lower rates for borrowing than private companies can, or than are available elsewhere, so what is the advantage in not just proceeding by Government borrowing at the cheaper rate?

[Andrea Leadsom]

I was coming to exactly that point. The point is that funding the project through a special purpose vehicle means that it is not consolidated into the national debt picture. In other words, it is an off-balance sheet form of financing. Therefore, for a Government who want to spend a lot of money on capital projects without blowing up their national debt picture, it is the perfect opportunity.

[Stephen Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

Further to the point made by the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert), is it not a central claim made by the industry that part of the advantage is the management of construction risk? One of the issues, however, which my hon. Friend the Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire referred to, is the bundling of contracts. The construction risk and the design are bundled with the management service charge, and that drives some of the complexity, which drives some of the cost.

[Andrea Leadsom]

I think that my hon. Friends are reading my speech, because that was to be my next point. They have obviously been given advance notice. That is exactly the point: the builder, in theory, takes the risk on a project such as building a school, and the LEA only ever starts to repay the debt when the school is built and everything is in place. Theoretically, the builder takes the project risk. However, as my hon. Friend the Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Stephen Barclay) says, in reality there is bundling, and because there are sometimes unique risks to a project, often those revert to the LEA. The perceived advantages from the fact that the builder takes the project risk are therefore not always as clear cut as they might appear. In the end the major advantage has been that of not consolidating the debt on the national balance sheet.

[George Eustice (Camborne and Redruth) (Con)]

On that point, is my hon. Friend aware that, as well as being poor value for money for the taxpayer, PFI contracts have caused problems with the restructuring of certain elements of the public sector? For instance, several schools that have become academies have had all sorts of problems with their PFI contracts, causing tensions between them and the local authority. Sometimes those problems have been a block to a school’s moving to academy status.

[Andrea Leadsom]

Again, my hon. Friend takes me to my next point: the other side of the equation is the very apparent disadvantages of PFI, the primary and key one being the lack of flexibility. The reason for it is that often a special purpose vehicle sets up the project, and therefore the project is inexorably linked to its financing. For example, you may build a school and decide you want an extra classroom or two. A PFI school in the constituency of a member of the Treasury Committee built its hockey pitch 2 feet too short for internationals, so it tried to extend it by 2 feet, but therein lay a can of worms. It was impossible to do it other than at exorbitant cost, because the contract and its financing are inextricably tied together within the special purpose company. What happens, and the reason hon. Members have spoken of money being made out of the contract as it proceeds, is precisely that if you want to change the spec—which of course you do—

[Mrs Anne Main (in the Chair)]

Order. The hon. Lady has on occasion referred to my wanting to do many things. I do not want to do any of them, but I am listening with interest.

[Andrea Leadsom]

I am sure that, privately, you might be interested Mrs Main, but thank you for keeping me in order.

What you—[Hon. Members: “One!”]—or rather not you, Mrs Main, but an LEA wanting to build a school, would need would be to have the entire specification for the school for the subsequent 25 years up front. That is clearly impossible, and the banks make their money by charging enormous arrangement fees and ongoing charges as schools change their requirements. That is how the money continues to come in from those projects.

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

The point that I believe is at issue is procurement failure. To take the example of the hockey pitch, if it is built 2 feet too short, that is a procurement failure. It is not necessarily a specification issue—there are such words as “fit for purpose”. The real issue with all the stuff we are talking about is that the public sector is incapable of procuring projects of such complexity. That is what happens, and that is why so much money is made in change requests. It is not principally to do with financing.

[Andrea Leadsom]

My hon. Friend makes a good point, and many of the problems arising from PFI have happened because the private sector saw the public sector coming. There have been all sorts of issues with poor public procurement, and where two PCTs in neighbouring counties have both commissioned a hospital, one has not learned the lessons of the other. Everyone comes at the thing afresh, and they all have the same problems and run into the same weaknesses. Nevertheless, there is an inherent lack of flexibility built into the projects, which cannot be overcome. It is therefore incredibly important to consider that the PFI on its own, even if it were the cheapest option, and even though it does not at the moment have an impact on our national debt picture, has an inherent weakness in its structure.

The other massive weakness in the structure, which has been exacerbated since the financial crisis, is the cost. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire said, the reality now, with Government gilts at about 3% to 4% long term, is that direct Government procurement would be much cheaper than a bank trying to fund a project itself over five to 25 years and make a profit, where the net cost to the taxpayer ends up at 8% or 9%. There is an enormous difference between the costs of direct procurement and PFI procurement. That is exacerbated by the financial crisis, and makes things almost unaffordable. We must begin to look at alternatives.

I want to float an idea that I have been trying to put to Ministers—and will be doing in the near future. That is the possibility that the green investment bank could provide some necessary competition to the PFI market. As I said earlier, there is a serious lack of competition. The Treasury Committee heard from PFI providers that often they bid only for perhaps one in three deals. Since there are only six or seven major PFI providers, that means there are probably only two, or at most three, serious bidders for any deal; that suggests an enormous lack of competition.

However, we are now thinking about the green investment bank—a brand new idea for this country, whose time has come. That bank will be looking to fund many of the low-carbon, high-tech and potentially economic infrastructure projects of the future, such as offshore wind farms—I shall not talk about railways, but others might; hon. Members will appreciate my personal sensitivity there. Offshore wind farms, roads and all the rest require long-term financing. That is a big challenge, and the green investment bank could address it.

[Lorely Burt (Solihull) (LD)]

I totally agree with the hon. Lady about the green investment bank. Does she think that that could prove to be a model for types of investment other than green infrastructure—things more along the lines of some of the PFI issues that are causing a problem at the moment?

[Andrea Leadsom]

Yes, I think that that is right. The green investment bank will have the specific remit of promoting green investments, and that is right and proper; but alternatives could be talked about.

What I propose is specific: it is that the green investment bank should be a bank in its own right. It should be listed on the London stock exchange and the Government should have perhaps a 10% shareholding in it. The UK high street banks should have the offer to purchase up to a 15% shareholding each, and the final 15% to 20% shareholding should be offered at a highly discounted rate to the British taxpayer. We would therefore have a bank with an undoubted triple A credit rating that would be able to fund itself extraordinarily cheaply—somewhere between Government gilts and triple A bank finance—and access the international capital markets, including very long-term funding.

That would kill many birds with one stone because there would be instant competition in the PFI market, which is something we desperately need, and an instant and huge threatening competition to the UK banking sector, about which we on the Treasury Committee are extremely worried. With its green remit, there would also potentially be a big competitor in the small and medium-sized enterprise market, about which I think all colleagues are concerned. I strongly ask my hon. Friend the Minister to consider the prospect that the green investment bank could provide a realistic alternative to PFI.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—