Infrastructure (Financial Assistance) Bill Debate
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Chris Leslie
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Infrastructure (Financial Assistance) Bill
Chris Leslie Excerpts(12 years, 2 months ago)
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Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (Lab/Co-op)
I beg to move amendment 11, page 1, line 6, after ‘infrastructure’, insert ‘within the United Kingdom’.
The Second Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Dawn Primarolo)
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 1, page 1, line 7, leave out ‘includes’ and insert ‘means’.
Amendment 9, page 1, line 11, after ‘health’, insert ‘childcare’.
Amendment 4, page 1, line 13, leave out paragraph (e).
Amendment 2, page 1, line 13, after ‘housing’, insert ‘, the function of which has a national significance.’.
Amendment 10, in clause 1, page 1, line 13, at end insert—
‘(2A) “Infrastructure” excludes the expansion of Heathrow airport before May 2015.’.
Chris Leslie
At near enough to 7 o’clock, I am glad that we finally turn our attention to the Infrastructure (Financial Assistance) Bill. Anybody following these proceedings might be astonished that we have been allowed just over two hours for the Committee stage. In our view it is unsatisfactory to leave the rules governing £50 billion of public expenditure to such scant and inadequate scrutiny. Although we do not necessarily disagree with the broad principles behind the Bill, that does not mean that we should fall short in our duty as parliamentarians to analyse, consider and improve the details of the legislation. Ministers cannot point to the House of Lords as the place where the Bill can be improved and amended if we run out of time for consideration in Committee. I think the last time the Lords sat in Committee on a money Bill was in 1995, when it considered the European Communities (Finance) Bill. This two-hour period is therefore the only opportunity we will get to scrutinise the particulars of the legislation; hence the amendments that are before us.
I want to talk to amendments 11 and 9 in this first group. Amendment 11 would make it clear that the substantive powers in the Bill, which give Ministers the ability to grant financial assistance to any persons, should be used for infrastructure in the United Kingdom, for essentially this reason: we believe that we should focus all our efforts on the domestic infrastructure needs of our country. That is why we think the Bill, if it can bring benefits, needs to focus very much on the benefits of infrastructure and bringing forward capital schemes here at home. Hon. Members will be aware that the UK has been falling behind quite considerably in the past couple of years in terms of infrastructure and capital investment schemes. Only today in the Financial Times we read about the Construction Products Association warning that
“infrastructure is in free-fall,”
and that it expects spending to fall by 13% in 2012 compared with the last calendar year, despite the hollow words of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Noble Francis, economics director at the CPA, said:
“We are getting to the stage where the government just can’t make more announcements with nothing happening. At some stage they are going to have to launch some capital investment that sees work happening on the ground. This can be done quickly, easily and cheaply speeding up work on the repair and maintenance of roads, schools, hospitals and housing.”
The article points out that road construction, to take one example of infrastructure investment,
“is suffering in particular, with the CPA projecting a decline of 40 per cent this year and 5 per cent next year.”
Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
I am listening to my hon. Friend’s speech with a lot of interest. I wonder whether he saw the recent CBI survey and the comments by its director general, John Cridland, who described it as
“a wake-up call that businesses in Britain are looking for action”—
on infrastructure—
“and we haven’t seen any yet.”
Chris Leslie
Alarm bells are ringing from a number of eminent institutions across the country, and they are not those that one might necessarily feel were natural allies of Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition. Nevertheless, they are saying exactly the same thing as us: when will the Treasury wake up and realise that the Government’s strategy on infrastructure—this laissez-faire approach—is singularly failing? Rather than driving new schemes forward, with their Bill and the rest of their strategy, the Government seem to be waiting for others to come forward with various schemes; they seem to be saying, “Please will you dream up some ideas?” They are hoping that something will turn up, but that is an approach characterised by drift rather than leadership when it comes to capital investment.
Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)
Is the situation not worse than that? In the early days of this Government, one of the first things they did was stop the Building Schools for the Future programme, which had been clarified and was seen as the way forward to develop new schools. There were projects involving five schools in my constituency, which would have put £80 million into the local economy, with the money spent on the private sector and building schools for those children. Those projects were frozen—the same thing happened across the country—but if they had gone ahead, we would now be in a much better position.
Chris Leslie
It is the long-term cost to public service quality and communities up and down the country that is the most frustrating thing about the Government’s approach. They have scrapped Building Schools for the Future. Who knows? Perhaps in a couple of years’ time they will realise the error of their ways and devise a “Funding building for schools” scheme, or cobble together some other name. It is no wonder that we are in this prolonged double-dip recession, with the Government pulling the rug from underneath the economy in the way that they have, chopping capital infrastructure investment away at its knees. It is no wonder that, for example, the construction sector has shrunk by, I think, 10% in the past 12 months. Nor is it any wonder that the “State of Trade” survey published by the Federation of Master Builders today—apparently it is the only survey of its kind looking at SME construction activity—says that 39% of respondents reported a decline in private new house building workloads in the third quarter of this year or that 40% predicted a further decline in the next quarter.
The Government’s record on capital investment and their approach to infrastructure are lamentable. It has never been clearer that they should be focusing squarely on the needs of infrastructure within the United Kingdom; hence amendment 11. Contrary to the claims of the Government—we will probably hear this from the Minister—figures from the Office for Budget Responsibility show that the Government will have spent £6.6 billion less over the three-year period from the spending review than Labour had planned, with budgets for schools, such as BSF, and affordable housing hit especially hard.
Stephen Timms
My hon. Friend has talked about organisations that are not necessarily natural supporters of Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition. Has he seen the recent comments from the Country Land and Business Association, which described the superfast broadband situation as “lamentable”—precisely the same word that he has just used? The association stated:
“It is becoming clear that the Government’s strategy will not meet the target date of 2015…There is no clear mechanism to put in place the universal service commitment.”
Is not this another example of the economy crying out for investment that is simply not being delivered?
Chris Leslie
My right hon. Friend makes an important point that emphasises the argument that we are making. This is not simply a question of the levels of capital investment; it is also a question of competence. It is also about the relentless need to focus on delivery, and on the detail behind the delivery. I just do not see the Treasury, as currently comprised, being capable of getting to grips with the granularity of some of the obstacles that face capital schemes. It is no wonder that we are falling further and further behind. The Treasury seems to see an obstacle and be deterred by it, rather than trying to tackle it and move past it.
Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
We are being invited to agree to a potential £50 billion commitment. Do the Opposition have any thoughts on the pace of that kind of expenditure? What levels would they recommend for this year, next year and the following year?
Chris Leslie
It is difficult to say, when looking at a guarantee scheme or underwriting scheme, because certain things are not wholly in the control of Ministers. They are putting the guarantee out there and waiting for organisations in the private sector or elsewhere to come forward and bid for the resource. It is a bit like pushing against a piece of string; it is impossible to know what the demand will be. We do not rule out the possibility of the proposal being of benefit—of course it could be—but it is impossible to know at this stage. We are holding up a finger to test the direction of the wind. There are no time scales in the Bill, and the explanatory notes do not add any information in that regard. We want to know the judgment of the studied intellects in the Treasury.
Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)
My hon. Friend mentioned the downturn in the house building industry. In my constituency, the total number of new house builds in the last quarter was just 10, and that is in a city whose population is growing. Does he accept that, in addition to the immediate difficulties that the construction industry is experiencing, companies that go bust and firms that close down cannot suddenly spring back into action when the economy changes? This is another reason why we need the measures that he is outlining, and that the Government have not yet put into operation.
Chris Leslie
That loss of productive capacity is another example of the permanent damage caused by recession, resulting in an inability to take advantage of the opportunities that present themselves when a recovery occurs. The International Monetary Fund released figures only last week to illustrate the damage being done by the recession to our ability to fulfil such expectations. In my city of Nottingham, not a single new affordable social house has been constructed in the past 12 months. Is that because there is no demand? Absolutely not. We have more than 12,000 people on waiting lists for decent homes. That applies in many other areas of the country as well, including Greenwich.
Mr Nick Raynsford (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)
My hon. Friend makes an extremely valid point about housing, but he understates the case. Infrastructure was the one sector of the construction industry that survived the early period of the recession relatively well. Indeed, by 2009, expenditure on infrastructure stood at £11.6 billion, which was the highest real-terms level for about two decades. That has now slipped away badly, because of the failure of the current Government to maintain infrastructure investment. That is the charge against them: they have allowed activity that was helping to counter the recession to be lost, and the sectors of the industry that are concerned with infrastructure are now as alarmed as the housing sector and all the others that have suffered so badly in the recession.
Chris Leslie
That is a pertinent point. The Government seem oblivious to the thoughtful concerns being expressed by industry practitioners about the damage that is being done. Their ideological fixation with austerity has led them to a position in which they have completely pulled the rug out from underneath the economy, and we are still only at an early stage of being able to calculate the damage.
Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)
Will my hon. Friend answer a question on amendment 11, which proposes to add the words “within the United Kingdom” to clause 1(1)? One of the most important areas of infrastructure over the next decade will be energy, and the infrastructure required to meet our energy need will include interconnectors for electricity and gas pipelines that will come across Europe from the Caucasus. I presume that the Bill, as it stands, could incentivise investment in interconnectors and gas pipelines, but would it still be able to do so if the amendment were agreed to, even though parts of the pipelines would obviously be within the United Kingdom?
Chris Leslie
It is important to recognise that we want the benefits of any financial assistance to be felt in the UK economy. I shall deal with the details of the amendments in a moment. We believe that the scheme should focus on stimulating growth within these shores, and prioritising resources for infrastructure within the United Kingdom is the right approach. The Minister will undoubtedly point out that, as part of the guarantees under the scheme that the Government announced in July, a £5 billion export refinancing facility was introduced to underwrite the lending commitments of foreign buyers of UK exports. Of course we believe that export credit guarantees can be legitimate and helpful to construction exports, but in times of UK recession, our priorities should lie squarely here at home.
Incidentally, if there is such a great demand for the services of the Export Credits Guarantee Department—which is part of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills—why does it appear to have underspent its existing budget in the past year? That does not suggest that there is a need to divert resources from domestic infrastructure into bankrolling foreign firms any more than is currently the case. The latest research shows that infrastructure spending within the UK will be of far greater benefit to our economy.
Indeed, the IMF had discussions last week about the multipliers. I do not want to go into too much technical detail, but the Office for Budget Responsibility used a fiscal multiplier of 0.5, which meant that Ministers thought that each pound they cut from public expenditure and capital investment would reduce economic output by only 50p. However, after examining the records of many countries that have embraced austerity since the financial crisis, the IMF reckons that the true multiplier is between 0.9 and 1.7. That has led the TUC to reveal that if the real multiplier is 1.3—somewhere in the middle of the IMF’s range—the OBR has underestimated the impact of the cuts by a cumulative £76 billion, more than 8% of gross domestic product, over five years. Instead of shaving less than 1% off economic growth during this financial year, austerity has potentially depressed it by more than 2%, which helps to explain why the economy has plunged into this double-dip recession. It is self-evident that providing financial assistance to infrastructure projects in the UK will provide a much greater stimulus to the British economy than giving financial assistance to projects abroad. Projects in the UK will boost employment in Britain; providing assistance to overseas projects will not.
Conservative Governments have a dubious record when it comes to underwriting foreign construction schemes. I am referring not only to the most recent, and much vaunted, export enterprise finance guarantee scheme, which assisted only five firms and has now folded because it was such a flop. I am also thinking of historic occasions such as that relating to the Pergau dam in Malaysia, which involved a too-close relationship between the aid being given to a foreign country and the trade that was taking place, particularly in relation to arms exports. It is very important that we learn the lessons from past failures when it comes to finance for foreign infrastructure schemes, and we particularly need to start prioritising schemes here in the UK.
Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood) (Con)
It is important for the hon. Gentleman to follow through the logic of his comments when it comes to funding for the European Investment Bank, for instance, or substantial increases in funds flowing to support projects elsewhere in the EU. Is that something that he and his hon. Friends would like to do something about?
Chris Leslie
We definitely need more scrutiny of the resources committed through the European Union to some of the schemes abroad, but as I understand it, this Bill will not substitute for the investment that the UK taxpayer makes to the European Investment Bank and elsewhere. This is about underwriting private projects that will, hopefully, bring benefit to our economy more broadly. Our view is that we should focus our prime attention on the economic needs here within the UK.
Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)
Does my hon. Friend accept that some of us have a concern with the wording of his amendment, which specifically refers to “within the United Kingdom”? In Northern Ireland, for instance, many of the infrastructure projects are likely to have a cross-border character. Infrastructure projects both large and small sometimes have commitments of money from the Irish Government as they serve hinterlands that cross the borders. With renewable energy, of course it makes sense for significant projects to have a cross-border character. They will serve not only Northern Ireland’s but Great Britain’s future energy needs. Might not my hon. Friend’s amendment preclude sensible investment support for such projects?
Chris Leslie
I would not want the amendment to have that particular effect, and I do not think it need have it, especially if the Government were in a position to frame the legislation in such a way as to see this potential £50 billion focused very much on the needs of our own people in our own country. I hear what my hon. Friend says, but I do not think this is the be-all-and-end-all of Treasury expenditure, as there are other ways and means of dealing with those few projects that might have a cross-border character. When it comes to the underwriting capacity of this particular Bill, we think it important to prioritise investment here at home.
Barry Gardiner
My hon. Friend will be aware that the perimeter of Northern Ireland is defined as the six counties, and that the continental shelf offshore was never included in the original agreement drawn up by the Foreign Office. [Interruption.] I realise that my hon. Friend the Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) knows this only too well. What that means is that we need clarity in respect not only of amendment 11, but of the “Short title, commencement and extent” provisions. At the moment, the Bill would preclude offshore wind development from the Northern Ireland coast. These matters may seem abstruse, but as constituted, the Bill does not make it clear that such infrastructure development would qualify for support. That question is as much one for the Minister as for my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie), but it seems to me that the question needs to be answered.
Chris Leslie
I am not sure I agree with my hon. Friend on the particular example he provided. It is quite clear that there would be benefit for the economy within the UK if those offshore schemes proceeded. The frustration I have is with the rather hasty drafting. Yes, we accept that it is necessary to frame a scheme that has sufficient flexibility, but there are dangers in enacting legislation that does not focus sufficiently on significant financial schemes, employment and jobs here in the UK. That is the purpose of the amendment.
Mark Lazarowicz
I am sure that when my hon. Friend’s amendment is successful, he will arrange for his noble Friends in the other place to deal with any clarifications required as a result of our debate. Earlier today we heard a statement on the west coast main line franchise, and we saw how the whole franchising system is in a state of shambles. Is that not going to have an effect on private sector investment, making it important to get even quicker investment in rail projects across the UK, through Directly Operated Railways, through Network Rail and other means to ensure that we gain the benefit—to the rail industry, to passengers and to the economy—now and not four, five, six or seven years down the line?
Chris Leslie
My hon. Friend is entirely right. This sends a message that the Government are incapable of running some of these bidding arrangements, incapable of awarding schemes in a competent and straightforward way and have no transparent or available methodology for scrutiny. That is my wider point. If we compare the laudable statements in the national infrastructure plan back in November 2011 with the actual progress made on many of those schemes to date, we see that the Government have fallen short in many different respects.
Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)
The Prime Minister said just under a year ago that the plan for job creation made it critical to get construction projects off the ground. My hon. Friend referred earlier to the Construction Products Association, which predicts a 13% decline in spending. Is it any wonder that the director general of the CBI says that Government plans for infrastructure are hot air—a complete fiction?
Chris Leslie
Looking through the detail of that national infrastructure plan helps us to realise how far the Government are falling short. Let us start looking at some of the particular schemes that are of great concern to our constituents here in the United Kingdom. The A14 road link between Felixstowe and the midlands, for example, was promised immediate investment in the national infrastructure plan in 2011, but the Department for Transport has now said that the construction will not begin for six years, subject to agreement with various local authorities on funding packages and so forth. There is already much concern about that particular scheme.
The Mersey Gateway bridge is another example. Many Cabinet Ministers described it as incredibly important. I think the Chancellor and the Transport Secretary at the time said that it could be implemented quickly, but although the Department for Transport wanted construction to begin in 2010, there will not be a preferred bidder until late 2013. Construction will not start until the end of that year and it is not due to open until 2016, or potentially even later.
Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)
My hon. Friend makes some important points about the consistency of Government leadership in seeing through some of the projects in the infrastructure plan. Comparison between the original plan for construction of November 2011 and the update in April this year suggests that 182 new projects have been added, but 63 disappeared without explanation. Does my hon. Friend agree that for any measures to have effect, leadership is necessary to see the projects through and to gain clarity on the outcomes we want to be delivered?
Chris Leslie
My hon. Friend is totally correct. Ministers seem to think they can come to the Dispatch Box and make a set of announcements, which will then magically happen as they busy themselves in their part-time political advisory roles or whatever they happen to be doing. If we start to walk through the projects one by one, we realise that Ministers are not gripping the issue.
Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)
My hon. Friend must have noticed during the Conservative party conference that the chaos and shambles goes right to the top. The Prime Minister claimed that work on the A11 was already under way, but any check on the Highways Agency website will show that the first spade will not be put into the ground until January. The Government simply do not know what they are doing, do they?
Chris Leslie
A pattern is emerging, but I shall not use the word “omnishambles”, which is probably past its best. There is great concern about these schemes. Thameslink, for example, is a project that is slipping considerably. The contracts for rolling stock were due to be awarded by early 2012; then it was by the summer, and now the Department says that the contract with the preferred bidder will be signed in the autumn. The Transport Select Committee is on top of that issue. It is writing to Secretaries of State asking why there is a delay with the rolling stock procurement, and I am sure that the Minister will be able to reply to that question when he responds to the debate. However, many other significant questions about delay need to be answered.
We need to know about the ongoing programme of work on the north Doncaster chord, a rail link that is greatly needed in that part of Yorkshire. The national infrastructure plan of 2011 promised that a business case would be provided by April 2012, but the proposed development is still awaiting a decision from the Secretary of State, which must be delivered before production can continue and construction can start.
The preferred bidder for the extension of the Northern line to Battersea was announced in June. A Treasury source then told the Evening Standard:
“The entire weight of the Government is being thrown behind the extension of the Northern Line”,
but nearly a year after the Chancellor’s autumn statement, the extension is still subject to the existence of funds. Despite backing from the
“entire weight of the Government”,
Transport for London can only say:
“Subject to funding being in place and permission from the Secretary of State for Transport, the new stations could be open by 2019.”
The construction of the Green Port Hull was due to begin this year, but Siemens now says that it will not sign a contract for the wind turbine factory until 2013. As for carbon capture and storage, the Department for Energy and Climate Change was supposedly
“developing a streamlined selection process”,
and £1 billion of capital was supposedly available to support the project, but construction is not due to begin until 2014.
Planning permission was granted in March for biomass electricity generation at Royal Portbury dock, but E.ON is currently taking time to
“review the prospects for the project in light of the UK Government’s current banding review”.
Again, a Government decision is awaited.
I am sure that I do not need to mention the issue of the 4G mobile spectrum auction and roll-out. Many Members may be checking their not necessarily 4G-compatible handsets as I speak. However, I will say that a very messy approach was taken to the auction of that particular regulatory arrangement, and that anyone who may be thinking of buying an iPhone 5 should be careful, because it will not necessarily be compatible with many possible providers. This is an example of our falling many years behind the United States, Germany, Sweden and parts of Asia. Unlike this country, they already have 4G services which are giving businesses opportunities to benefit customers.
We need only compare the much-vaunted promises of the 2011 national infrastructure plan with the actuality of the infrastructure pipeline that was announced in April. Although 182 new projects had been added, 63 had disappeared without explanation. Of the 357 projects announced in November that were updated in April, nearly two thirds were still in pre-procurement stages, and just 38 had proceeded to procurement or construction. Of the 229 that were still at the pre-procurement stage, three quarters were still at the same stage as had been reported in November 2011, and 36 had moved backwards.
Members may recall the regional growth fund, the supposed successor of the regional development agencies and, supposedly, the Government’s flagship alternative for regional economic development. Although the winners were announced in, I believe, April 2011, fewer than half the final offer agreements in rounds 1 and 2 of the fund have been put in place. Only £60 million of the £1.4 billion fund to spur growth has been released to businesses, and, according to a report by the Public Accounts Committee, the £364 million spent by the fund so far has been held up in intermediaries such as banks and local authorities.
Stephen Timms
My hon. Friend is making a powerful case, and I hope that we shall hear a response to it shortly. Has he seen the assessment by the British Chambers of Commerce which—before the election, I believe—identified 13 critical infrastructure projects, and said that although three were going ahead, there had been little or no progress on eight of them? That is a lamentable situation. Businesses across the country are desperate for those projects to go ahead.
Chris Leslie
It is very difficult to find an explanation for this Keystone Cops approach to infrastructure schemes, other than that the Government are incapable of getting to grips with the detail. I welcome the Minister to his position—he may be a new broom who will sweep everything clean, deal with the issues firmly and move many of these infrastructure projects forward—but I want to hear about his strategy for improving infrastructure on these shores, in the United Kingdom.
Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)
May I intervene on my hon. Friend before he leaves the subject of the regional spread of investment? He will recall that on Second Reading I informed the House of changes in the level of infrastructure investment region by region. Some regions experienced an increase in investment between 2009 and 2011—most notably London, whose 18% increase was probably fuelled by the Olympics—but all the rest of the country, apart from three regions, experienced a reduction. Investment fell by 31% in Yorkshire and the Humber and the north-west, and by 32% in Wales. Does my hon. Friend think that the Bill, and the fund that it will establish, will provide an opportunity for some of those regional imbalances to be redressed?
Chris Leslie
I would like to hope so, but I do not advise my hon. Friend to hold his breath. We are not even talking about a fund; we are talking about promises to under-run funds in order to guarantee other schemes as they come forward. Where is the confidence? Where is the demand in the economy? Where are the private sector schemes whose organisers want to come forward? Far greater efforts must be made, and the Government must take the economic climate more seriously. We should be bringing forward schemes, prioritising UK infrastructure, and kick-starting construction here at home. We have suggested that revenue from the 4G spectrum auction should be used to fund the building of 100,000 new homes, and we are more than happy for the Chancellor to steal our thunder in the autumn—or should I say Christmas—statement on 5 December. Our amendment would ensure that the Bill focused on the British economy, and that should surely be the starting point.
Mr Redwood
I think we should be a bit careful. I thought that the Bill to which we are being invited to consent would provide solely, or primarily, for guarantees and loans, but in fact it allows expenditure and
“any… kind of financial assistance”,
which could include direct purchase. It certainly includes court or prison facilities and roads, which, in many cases, will involve no revenue, so presumably that means direct spending.
Chris Leslie
I think that the right hon. Gentleman is technically correct. The wording of the Bill is very loosely framed. We know that accounting officers in the Treasury had put a big question mark over exactly what Ministers were proposing. They wanted one line to cover them in circumstances in which things might go wrong, and they would be challenged and hauled before the Public Accounts Committee. That dates back to the 1932 concordat on public accounts, and it is being radically changed by the Bill. We do not necessarily think that that is the wrong thing to do, but it is noticeable that legislation has been presented to the House of Commons by Ministers who cannot say what it will be used for. We need information on the specifics of the schemes and the dates on which they will be supported. That is the level of detail that we require.
Amendment 9 relates to the definition of “infrastructure” in clause 1. I am sorry that the amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Hugh Bayley) was not selected; he noticed that flood defence schemes were not included in the list of items covered by infrastructure expenditure.
Our amendment seeks to insert the word “childcare”. Education is included in the set of infrastructure projects that might benefit from the scheme, but child care is quite different. We consider that to be an obvious anomaly which the Government should correct. We know that the costs of child care are afflicting many families throughout the country, a number of whom are not necessarily choosing to enter employment because the child care options are too limited or too expensive. One of the reasons why child care is so expensive is that the facilities are expensive. We do not have enough of them, and we need more investment in them.
Chris Leslie
I am happy to give way to my hon. Friend, who I know has campaigned strongly on these matters.
Kate Green
Does my hon. Friend agree that many of the infrastructure projects the Government have talked about have been in typically masculine industries? Does he also agree that one of the huge advantages of investment in child care is that it also helps to redress the high level of female unemployment—it is the highest in a quarter of a century—because it offers the opportunity for more mothers to go out to work and because that sector remains largely dominated by female employees?
Chris Leslie
My hon. Friend’s point is borne out by the statistics. Only 67% of mothers in the UK are in employment, which compares with figures of 84% in Denmark, 79% in the Netherlands and 74% in France. That reflects on the characteristics of our national output and our economy. More could be done to help those parents to gain access to employment. Families in the UK with pre-school-age children spend more on child care than is spent by this group in any other OECD country, except Switzerland. More nursery places and more not-for-profit providers of child care would help to drive down that cost. According to the OECD, the cost of child care in the UK is more than 26% of the average family income in those circumstances, whereas the OECD average is just under 12%, so this is a very significant drag on family budgets and it is holding back our economy.
The Daycare Trust has called for Government assistance to enable children’s centres, smaller private providers and not-for-profit early years providers to expand. It has pointed out that some 28,000 extra nursery places for two-year-olds need to be found in London alone, so we can clearly see that child care issues need to be considered in the definition of “infrastructure” that could obtain support under this legislation. Those are the amendments that I wish to discuss for the time being, but other hon. Members will doubtless have noticed omissions in the legislation.
Mr Redwood
My concern about this Bill is with the definitions and the amount of money involved. I am obviously very much in favour of more productive infrastructure projects going ahead as quickly as possible. There may well be utility in facilitating the Government to make guarantees, support or indemnities available at a time when the banking system is still not functioning well and it is difficult getting these things financed privately in the way we normally like. However, I start from the proposition that what we really need to be doing is generating a lot more freestanding private sector investment projects. It would be better if we took stronger and faster action to remedy the banking problems that lie underneath the problems we face in getting these things financed.
I am concerned that the wide-ranging powers in clause 1 may lead to a big increase in public spending, which would damage the Government’s fiscal targets. A lot of time and energy has been expended by Governments on reducing capital programmes to try to get public spending down to levels thought to be more compatible with reality and markets. We want to avoid this Bill becoming a way of undoing all the hard work that has been done to try to get the deficit down, at a time when this Government strongly believe that deficit reduction is crucial. The outgoing Government actually enacted legislation committing themselves to halving the deficit over the lifetime of this Parliament.
The definition of “infrastructure” in clause 1(2) is wide ranging. I thought that the type of infrastructure we had in mind for this Bill was that in subsection 2(a), which states that infrastructure is about “water, electricity, gas, telecommunications”. Those services are all provided by the private sector with charges to customers, so there is a flow of revenue that can remunerate the capital. If those projects are held up because of banking difficulties, I have every wish to encourage the Minister, newly in his job—I give him my congratulations—to expedite them. One hopes that the Government would be properly rewarded for the indemnities and the guarantees, or that they would not be necessary in the fullness of time, and so the taxpayer would not lose by this process. I am happy with that provision, which I thought was the thrust of the Bill.
However, subsection (2) also provides for mixed projects and entirely public sector projects. It includes mixed projects in the form of railway facilities. Railways are extremely heavily subsidised, and any new project is likely to require many years of future subsidy, because such projects do not normally reward the railway operator or the taxpayer sufficiently from the fare revenue. We therefore need to consider, for any one of these projects, the medium-term and long-term implications of cash outflows from the public sector, as well as the private sector revenues. Those things cause difficulty in the evaluation, as we have found recently through one of the franchise problems.
Subsection (2) also makes provision in respect of areas where spending must entirely be an expense for the public sector—I assume that we are not envisaging court or prison facilities having paying guests who would contribute towards the costs, so this money will be entirely expended by the public sector.
Chris Leslie
I am not satisfied by the Minister’s answer on amendment 11. Nothing in the Bill precludes the £50 billion from being used largely—never mind in part—to bankroll foreign infrastructure schemes. He did not address that point carefully enough. We believe that the focus has to be on economic recovery here at home in the United Kingdom. The Minister may well believe that he would not sanction schemes that strayed beyond that, but reshuffles come and go—we could even end up with a Liberal Democrat Minister in his position. Who knows what would happen in those circumstances?
For those reasons, as well as those that I enunciated earlier, I would like to press amendment 11 to a vote.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Chris Leslie
I beg to move amendment 7, in page 2, line 3, at end insert—
‘(6A) In any agreement to give financial assistance in this section the Treasury or Secretary of State shall give reasonable consideration to clawback provisions which safeguard best value for the taxpayer.’.
The Temporary Chair (Sir Roger Gale)
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 12, in clause 4, page 3, line 8, at end insert—
‘(f) the beneficial owners of any debt issued by a company receiving infrastructure assistance or one of their subsidiary companies,
(g) the beneficial owners of any company which has entered into an agreement to receive infrastructure assistance,
(h) for the purposes of this Act beneficial owner has the same meaning as that conferred by the Money Laundering Regulations 2007.’.
New clause 3—Customer due diligence measures
‘(1) Before any infrastructure assistance is given the Treasury must apply customer due diligence measures on any business requesting infrastructure assistance.
(2) For the purposes of this Act customer due diligence measures will have the same meaning as that conferred by the Money Laundering Regulations 2007.’.
Chris Leslie
Amendment 7, which stands in my name and those of my hon. Friends, seeks to ensure that the Bill provides a safeguard for taxpayers’ money. After all, £50 billion of guarantees could be underwritten for the private sector on pretty much any kind of scheme, and we heard fuzzy logic from the Minister earlier, when he said that infrastructure is not quite as defined as it appears in the Bill, and that some projects could be national and some foreign.
In some circumstances, underwriting can be beneficial and welcome—it can make schemes viable that were not viable previously and unlock infrastructure developments that might not otherwise take place, but in other circumstances there are disadvantages to underwriting. Underwriting means that gains from a private endeavour are privatised, but that any losses are socialised. The entrepreneur, the shareholder and the owner of a private company or project that benefits from the safety net provided by the taxpayer could profit well for many years if a scheme bears fruit, but if the scheme goes wrong and if there are failures in it, the losses fall on you, Mr Gale, on me, on hon. Members and, most importantly, on our constituents.
I make no apologies for standing up for the taxpayer’s best interests. It is important that we ensure that Ministers consider introducing clawback provisions that safeguard best value for taxpayers. The amendment is so unobjectionable that I cannot understand why the Government would object to it. The Opposition are simply saying that, in any agreement to give financial assistance, the Chancellor or Secretary of State
“shall give reasonable consideration to clawback provisions which safeguard the taxpayer.”
What do I mean by “clawback provisions”? Hon. Members who have served on the Public Accounts Committee will know that from time to time Governments have entered into contracts and sold privatised parts of the public sector. The purchasers have then gone on to make millions of pounds when they have sold on some of those assets. In this case, the guarantor has ended up facilitating a project, but the beneficiary of the guarantee went on to make significant sums.
We are simply saying that the Treasury needs to make sure that there are clauses in the underwriting contracts—the offers—that ensure that if significant gains are made in the long term, the taxpayer can have a share in some of the future profits. It is a basic principle—if the taxpayer helps to create profitability for a person and bears the risk of loss, that person can reasonably be expected to share some of the excess profits with the taxpayer. It is a basic principle of prudent stewardship of taxpayers’ money. It would also ensure that we deal with the question of moral hazard. We know that in some circumstances underwriting can cause difficulties if a scheme that might be shaky goes ahead as a result, which is of course a distortion of the market environment.
If schemes go ahead and make significant gains and provide future returns that are in excess of what might be expected, the taxpayer could have some rights to those. For example, in a prime executive housing site in central London developed thanks in part to the Government underwriting property market risks, the units may sell at multiples of expected initial prices, with vast profits for the developer. In the current situation, what would the taxpayer get? Foreign-owned energy companies want a pipeline stretching from our shores across the continent, which could well be underwritten by the provisions in the Bill. If we fund part of that as taxpayers, but the company makes significant long-term returns on the oil and gas, what should be the taxpayers’ share in that?
Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)
Do not the Government appear to be privatising the profits, but socialising the losses? How can that be fair?
Chris Leslie
That is indeed the approach taken in some of the underwriting provisions. Of course there can be circumstances in which that makes sense, perhaps to tip a project that is viable and in the national interest from something that might not happen to something that moves ahead in a way that benefits everyone.
The amendment does not even say that every contract should have a clawback provision: we are simply saying that the Treasury should be under a statutory obligation to give reasonable consideration to the insertion of clawback clauses in the contracts. That is the be all and end all of amendment 7 and I hope that the arguments are fairly straightforward. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s view.
Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)
I wish to speak briefly to amendment 12 and new clause 3, which are both in my name. Both relate to the reports that the Government propose in clause 3 should be annually produced, and to the transparency of the companies involved in this support for infrastructure, which I welcome.
Both the amendment and the new clause follow discussions that I have had with my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary, who is now in his place on the Front Bench with his new ministerial colleague, whom I also welcome. The amendment and new clause are prompted by the fact that we often do not know the identities of the beneficial owners of the companies with which the Government do business. Companies often have shares owned by trusts or other companies based in countries that do not require disclosure of ownership, and I shall give a few examples.
The M6 toll road is owned by Midland Expressway Ltd, which is owned in turn by the Macquarie Motorways Group Ltd, which is in turn owned by Macquarie Atlas Roads International Ltd of Bermuda. It is controlled by Macquarie Infrastructure Group, but the identity of its investors and therefore of the owners of MEL remains unknown and undisclosed. In 2006, however, they paid themselves a £392 million exceptional dividend, and over six years made a return on their investment of more than 150% a year. This sort of profit at the public’s expense by we know not whom is not an acceptable arrangement, and I want the Government to be warned against it and to ensure that all owners are in the public domain.
Arqiva, as a private sector monopoly, is regulated by Ofcom. It runs all the transmission services for all UK terrestrial television broadcasters and for BBC Radio and most commercial radio services, owns two of the four digital multiplexes, supplies the Government with mobile and wireless communications and supplies three quarters of all police forces. It receives annual revenues of about £1 billion and makes annual losses of about £250 million. The ultimate owners of the company appear to be based in Bermuda, although we do not know who they are, and Arqiva has paid no corporation tax for four years.
Thames Water, the UK’s largest water supplier and a monopoly private sector company providing a public service with which the public therefore has no option but to deal was bought by Macquarie European Infrastructure Fund in 2006. The long-term debt held by the company was £3.4 billion and is now £7.7 billion. When the company was bought, Thames Water took on all the debt taken out by its owners to buy the company, which was more than £3 billion. To do that, it set up a company in the Cayman islands, Thames Water Utilities Cayman Finance Ltd, which is registered at an address at which are registered 18,000 other companies.
Over the past four years, Thames Water has made profits after tax of £314 million, £331 million, £225 million and £247 million, and has paid dividends of £398 million, £291 million, £271 million and £480 million, but in the last tax year paid no tax. In the previous year, it paid £500,000 in tax, and the year before that £16 million, yet it has a stable operating profit of about £600 million a year. I could go on. There are health care companies, and the company currently negotiating with the London fire brigade over the water to buy the old fire brigade headquarters looks as if it is based in the British Virgin Islands and the Isle of Man.
Sajid Javid
My right hon. Friend began to make his point in the earlier debate, but was unfortunately cut short. The Government are keen to ensure that when they analyse each application that will benefit from these guarantees, they establish the identities of the true beneficial owners of every scheme. Although that process is not included in what was deliberately designed to be a short Bill, much of the detail is included in the individual schemes. It will be in the UK guarantees scheme, and also in the programme that will cover the housing element of the guarantees, which will be published shortly.
My right hon. Friend also raised a point, in relation to one of his amendments, about the beneficiaries of the debt guarantees. He may have been alluding to the actual holders of the debt instruments. Although I understand and sympathise with his principle, this approach would not be very practical because debt instruments, particularly bonds, are tradeable and so, as with gilts, it would be hard to track the owners of those instruments.
Chris Leslie
I am glad that the Minister was addressing the important amendments tabled by the right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes), but I wish to focus on transparency in respect of not only the beneficiaries, but the person receiving financial assistance. The Minister will know that, because of the knife, we did not get to my amendment asking for the details of the persons receiving some of this funding to be placed in the public domain. Will he give a commitment that that information—the details of those beneficiaries—will be made public?
Sajid Javid
The process of analysing each of the applications under the Bill will include a thorough due diligence process, which will examine the beneficiaries in each case. The Government will not issue a guarantee if they are not satisfied with the outcome of that due diligence process. It is not the standard procedure for the Government to publish all the information they look at when making decisions on guarantees, but the hon. Gentleman should be assured that this will be a very thorough process, which will have the assistance of outside sources if required.
Chris Leslie
Although the Opposition will not oppose the Bill on Third Reading, we do not think that the matter should rest there. It is not the most impressive Bill ever placed before this august Chamber. The Minister said that he was grateful for the excellent and informative debate we have had so far, but we had a pretty farcical two hours of scrutiny in Committee; we managed to debate only clause 1 and had no debate on a third of the amendments that were tabled. I think the Government showed a large measure of disrespect to the process of parliamentary scrutiny in the way they misallocated time for today’s discussions.
This legislation is very much in the frame of mind of the “wait and see” game we are used to seeing from the Chancellor and the Treasury team. They hope that something will crop up but are not exactly sure what. The Minister said that he hoped there would be some expressions of interest in something or other but that, ultimately, he cannot predict the future. My right hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr Raynsford) asked the killer question: what will be the measure of success for the Bill? What answer did the Minister give? Essentially he said, “We cannot not really predict that, but we are confident that projects will come forward, so judge for yourself.” That is a totally embarrassing and appalling way of managing and advocating what should be a far more sophisticated approach to making public and economic policy.
The country deserves far better than the “wait and see” approach from Ministers. Surely there should be some semblance of projections for how the Bill will be deployed and some way of gauging what that interest is, rather than just putting it out there and hoping that something will happen. But of course we must not forget that the Bill is in large part a device to make it look as though the Government are actually busy. There is one effective sentence in clause 1 that covers the blushes of the accounting officers so that underwriting arrangements can span various financial years, but essentially this is makey-uppy, make-work legislation to make the Government look determined and busy in the Chamber.
Do not forget that we will have a growth Bill in due course, although we are still not clear what will be in it. The Prime Minister famously said that we cannot legislate for growth, so we will see what becomes of that Bill.
Stephen Phillips
The hon. Gentleman criticises the Minister for not laying out what the hon. Gentleman regards as the criteria by which the Bill’s success is to be measured. What are the criteria by which the Opposition will measure the success of the Bill, given that they are not going to divide the House on Third Reading?
Chris Leslie
We did not have time to discuss some of our amendments. We wanted far more information about the nature of the loans, underwriting and even grants being given to the private sector. The right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) tabled some important amendments that we did not get the chance to discuss in any great detail.
My amendment 5 simply talked about making sure that the public can know to whom the financial assistance is being given—a pretty basic tenet of transparency and accountability for public resources. The Minister could not say that that information would be in the public domain. We are not even necessarily allowed to know to whom the financial assistance is being given.
The Minister says that due diligence will be thorough as far as the Treasury is concerned, but what about the rest of us? Our constituents send us here to keep an eye on what the Executive are doing with public money. Without that basic information, how are we to judge the success of the legislation?
Simon Hughes
The hon. Gentleman knows that I share his frustration that we did not have more time to look at the issues in Committee. I suggest that that is not the Government’s fault. I remember many occasions when we had exactly the same problem under the Labour Government. Rather than blaming the Government, will he and his colleagues work with us to make sure that we have a system across Parliament—just a change in the rules that gives injury time if urgent questions or statements take up time for principal legislation? That is a way of solving the problem, and we would all be much happier as a result.
Chris Leslie
Of course we can have arrangements. There are perfectly available arrangements for making sure that there is time for legislation, but the Opposition do not control the timetabling of debates. I do not want to bang on about the procedure, but suffice it to say that it was inadequate.
We did not get a chance to debate the reporting mechanisms for what happens in terms of the financial assistance given to unknown persons. The hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Stephen Phillips) asked what measure we would have of the Bill’s success. I think that there should be reports not every 12 months, but every six months. If the issue is so urgent and there is a national emergency—if it is a case of, “Let’s get infrastructure going and press ahead with capital investment”—let us have far more frequent reports.
We do not know how much taxpayers’ money is on the line, how much is being committed per project, what form the financial assistance will commonly take, what type of companies will receive the financial assistance and even what type of infrastructure projects will receive such assistance. There are a lot of unknown unknowns in the legislation.
I hoped that we would have the chance to cover other key points. For example, I am particularly concerned about the availability of social housing. I mentioned earlier that in my city of Nottingham, not a single extra affordable social house was built in the last financial year. That is unacceptable.
Perhaps the situation will be made worse by the fact that the housing stock of certain local authorities has been transferred to housing associations, but quite a number of authorities either retain their council housing stock or have arm’s length management organisations —ALMOs—doing that. As I read the legislation, if someone’s local authority has not moved to housing associations, they will not be able to benefit from the underwriting as much as people whose local authorities have, because ALMOs and local authority-retained stock areas cannot be underwritten because of the borrowing constraints. There is a perfectly legitimate question—not a partisan question—about how we ensure fairness from one city to another and one area to another, but we did not get an opportunity to debate those issues.
Sajid Javid
I am pleased that the shadow Minister is now concerned about social housing for his constituents, because perhaps he can explain to them why, during his party’s 13 years in government, the number of social houses fell by a net 421,000 and the number of people on the social housing waiting list went up from 1 million to 1.8 million.
Chris Leslie
If the Minister were talking on the basis of having made some progress or having reached some level of achievement as regards housing policy, perhaps he would have the right to start throwing accusations about. Of course, far more could and should have been done in the past, but after two and a half years under his party’s Administration, where are we going on housing construction? According to the Construction Products Association, it is going through the floor; “free-fall” is the phrase linked to the CPA in this morning’s Financial Times.
John Healey
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. In particular, social housing construction, which was the subject of the Minister’s intervention, has plummeted by 25% in the past year. That is the direction it is going in under this Government.
Chris Leslie
Exactly; my right hon. Friend is right. Official data show that construction output is down by 11.6% on the year before, and the Construction Products Association predicts a 13% fall in infrastructure investment this year. When one starts to look at what is actually happening in the real economy and the real world today, it is clearly not about the announcements that Ministers bring to the Chamber as though they represent reality. The Bill may well go on to the statute book after this debate, but if the Government are relying on it alone, we remain concerned that the infrastructure schemes for housing, schools, child care, transport and so forth which should be proceeding will not move forward as effectively as they should.
There are other concerns that the Minister has not addressed, perhaps because the Government do not have an implementation plan that they can allude to. For example, they have not talked about state aid clearance. The Bill says that financial assistance can be given to particular industries and private sector ventures in operations, in maintenance and in repairs, but perhaps to the exclusion of other companies. What is the Government’s approach to state aid clearance from the European Union? If they hit such a barrier in the EU, will they simply say, “Well, another month, another quarter, another year has gone by and we didn’t get state aid clearance”? How are they approaching those barriers, and when will they report to Parliament about how they are going to tackle these issues? Those are more obstacles that they do not appear to have addressed in any way.
Mark Durkan
Does my hon. Friend perceive that under the Bill there is a risk of the UK Government granting guarantees to companies in a way that would mean that those companies could gazump other projects that had been developed, perhaps in devolved areas, and come in on a pretty anti-competitive basis, not only constraining the choices of devolved Administrations but ruining the chances and prospects of companies that were working on projects and making good offers in those areas?
Chris Leslie
That is the sort of point that should have arisen if we had had the opportunity properly to scrutinise the Bill.
Most people observing the Government and the workings of Parliament from outside assume that there is a level of sophistication in the Treasury and that the people there must have a level of intellect and capability that is somehow superior to the rest of us. They do not realise that when one looks inside the Treasury it is clear that those people are crossing their fingers, holding their breath, and making it up as they go along. This back-of-a-fag-packet approach to legislation simply will not do. This country’s growth prospects have been worsened by this Administration’s policies. As the former US Treasury Secretary, Larry Summers, wrote in the Financial Times this morning, economies that become stuck in a vicious circle of austerity and stagnation will find it ever harder to deal with their deficits and stabilise public finances.
The Office for Budget Responsibility’s out-turn figures show that the Government are cutting capital expenditure by more than £6 billion more than the previous Government planned. Combined with other austerity measures, this has resulted in a collapse in infrastructure investment. More than 119,000 construction sector jobs have been lost so far, and according to the Construction Industry Training Board the Government are spending £8 billion more in benefits for the 188,000 unemployed construction workers.
Borrowing is not falling, but rising this year—it is up 22% in the first five months of this financial year compared with last year. This Government are borrowing not to pay for investment and positive development, but to pay for the failures of their economic plan and to cover the costs of considerable increases in welfare in particular.
We need an alternative that focuses on action today and that understands that we need to introduce—really introduce—some of the capital schemes, roll up our sleeves and get on with them. The 4G mobile spectrum auction will take place soon and we hope that it will yield at least £3 billion. Let us put that money towards 100,000 new homes and put some serious investment into infrastructure. Let us build on some of the successes that we know Britain can deliver on infrastructure.
There is a complete mismatch between the Government’s words and their actions: our infrastructure is deteriorating, not improving; construction work is down, not up; and hundreds of thousands of young people are languishing on benefits while businesses delay the investment needed to maintain their competitiveness and market share. That is just not good enough and much more is needed than the vagaries of this Bill.