Subsidy Control Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 7th February 2022 Grand Committee

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to offer Green group support for all these amendments, to which we might well have attached our names were we not caught in this massive legislative pile-up. I should declare my interests as a vice-chair of the LGA and of the NALC. With the amendments having been so comprehensively and effectively introduced by the noble Baronesses, Lady Blake and Lady Humphreys, I shall make just a few additional points.

One of the most popular hashtags in my rather busy Twitter feed is #LandofCronies. There is grave public concern about corruption, cronyism and the nature of decision-making on government spending. Indeed, I put it to the Minister that these amendments collectively could be a great protection for Ministers in future, enabling them to say, “Here’s the transparency. What we’re doing is very clear and very obvious.” I note that in the other place such diverse and broadly respected organisations as the Centre for Policy Studies, the Adam Smith Institute and Transparency International backed similar amendments and that the Financial Times has warned that the new planned flexible regime could pose a “significant risk” and

“On the altar of speed, it has sacrificed scrutiny”—


it being the Government.

We are in a very interesting situation whereby the subsidy regime, having been under the control of EU rules and the UK having traditionally provided much less public funding than most other countries—around £8 billion a year—is now about to increase dramatically just as the controls utterly fall away. This is about showing people what is done; it is democracy and transparency in action. There is broad support for these amendments, so I would be delighted to hear the Minister express that the Government are moving in this direction.

[Baroness Altmann (Con)]

My Lords, I support these amendments. I support the aim of a more flexible scheme than the EU has, and I welcome the Government’s commitment to introduce transparency to their new subsidy scheme, but, as others have explained, this Bill potentially reduces transparency.

The amendments in this group had strong support in the other place, not least from our honourable friends John Penrose and Kevin Hollinrake. I also thank the Centre for Public Data, which has worked with them to provide information to help the Government achieve what they want to achieve perhaps in a better way, which is what these amendments may enable to be done.

I support the use of subsidies to achieve the levelling-up agenda and the net-zero agenda. I think that we all realise that regional growth and infrastructure need an extra boost now. However, can the aim of reducing central control of subsidies and relying on transparency, so that interested parties can challenge subsidies that they believe are unlawful, be achieved by a process whereby those interested parties will not know that there is a subsidy unless it is more than £0.5 million and there could be a series of subsidies just below that which could amount to quite substantial sums? It would help me understand how this aim could be realised if the transparency that I think we could rely on cannot be achieved because the database does not include a record of those very subsidies that are meant to be challenged. I suggest that this seems somewhat illogical, and I urge my noble friend either to bring back his own amendments on Report or to consider accepting these amendments.