Oral Answers to Questions

Helen Goodman Excerpts

Tuesday 16th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

Yes, I can agree with my hon. Friend on that. Any party that aspires to government and is serious about properly managing the public finances should be able to explain how it would fund the expenditure it is committing to—and to do so without consulting an iPad.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

The Chancellor says that he does not want to incur more debt, but yesterday the Treasury approved a minute providing for a contingent liability on Carillion, for which we have had no estimate. Will he please explain to the House what sort of expenditure will be covered—I see that he has given an indemnity to the receiver—and how he will report to the House on how much money the Government will be liable for?

[Mr Hammond]

Yes, the Government have given an indemnity to the official receiver so that it can take on the role of special manager of Carillion’s assets to ensure the continuity of public services in the many schools, hospitals and local authorities that have contracts with Carillion. The Treasury has provided the official receiver with a line of credit that enables the official receiver’s office to operate the company’s public sector contracts, after which it will, in due course, recover the costs from the Department that would have paid fees for those services anyway. The official receiver can only step in and do this with the Treasury’s underwriting, and we deemed it appropriate to give that underwriting.