Clive Betts
Main Page: Clive Betts (Labour - Sheffield South East)Department Debates - View all Clive Betts's debates with the Department for Education
(13 years, 9 months ago)
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Vince Cable
Technology innovation centres are proving extremely welcome in the research community because they represent a bridge between academic research and business application. The first of those—the advanced manufacturing TIC—has been launched, and I went to Rotherham at its outset. Others are being prepared, and I am sure that the one in my hon. Friend’s constituency will be carefully considered by the TSB.
Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)
T2. On enterprise zones, do the Government agree that it is important that subsidies are not simply given to jobs and development that would have happened anyway? It is fairly easy to see how the Government could stop, and take measures to prevent, a firm from simply transferring to an enterprise zone with public money, but if a firm decides to expand into an enterprise zone, or if a new firm is created in one, how can the Government ensure that money is not simply given to a development and jobs that would have existed without the subsidy?
Mr Prisk
Care needs to be taken in respect of the displacement effects of this policy, and indeed any other spatial economic policy, because of the danger to which the hon. Gentleman alludes. We are working deliberately with local enterprise partnerships to minimise that danger, and looking to ensure that we understand the dynamics of the economy in those areas. That is why the whole Government are ensuring that we do not simply impose the policy from the centre, but work with enterprise partnerships.