Financial Assistance to Industry

Jack Rankin Excerpts

Tuesday 10th November 2026 General Committees

[Jack Rankin (Windsor) (Con)]

The Committee is discussing and deciding on a significant and unique grant of taxpayers’ money today. In my opinion, it is inappropriate for a decision of this size to be taken in a Delegated Legislation Committee with such scant information as this. This matter should be given real, proper and timely consideration.

We all want to see the Universal project happen in this country and it is right that it has had cross-party and Government support, but let us be clear about what the Committee is being asked to approve today. There are three funding pots through which the Government have proposed to support the project. There is the DCMS grant for community infrastructure and the DFT funding pot, both of which I can understand. It is right and proper that the Government are supporting the project with wider enabling infrastructure that will support the community and enable significant direct foreign investment. But the third funding pot, which we are talking about today, is £400 million through the exceptional regional growth fund direct to Comcast NBCUniversal.

Often in life, if it looks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, it probably is a duck, so let us call this what it is: a phenomenal bung from taxpayers to a massive, profitable US corporation. When operated for inflation, this is around £450 million—almost half a billion pounds—in taxpayer subsidy. It is highly inappropriate and, I believe, unprecedented to make that kind of award in a quiet room like this without proper scrutiny.

I must declare an interest—not only as a taxpayer, but as the Member of Parliament for Windsor, where we are proud to have Legoland Windsor resort. I back that fantastic resort. Like the Universal United Kingdom resort will, I hope, one day become, it is a hugely successful theme park that attracts visitors from across the country and beyond and brings in investment, not to mention wider benefits for the local economy, in hotels, restaurants and other local businesses. Consider this from Legoland’s point of view. In a fiercely competitive market, it will now have to contend with £450 million handed to a competitor just up the road in Bedfordshire. Fair enough if Universal comes in on its own merits and wins custom from Legoland—it is for Legoland’s team to respond and innovate to attract new visitors—but this is putting much more than a finger on the scales in aid of Universal.

If, like me, one has free market convictions, which are perhaps broadly shared on the Opposition Benches, one could see this as a distorting bung in a competitive marketplace. However, one does not have to be a free market ideologue to see that this is unfair and distortionary and amounts to picking a winner. It is simply not fair. I appeal to more progressive ears in the room today. Is this how they think working people’s hard-earned money should be spent—on Comcast NBCUniversal? What could they spend half a billion pounds on in their constituencies? This is essentially a huge payout to one of the most successful entertainment conglomerates in the world.

We should ask ourselves what the purpose of the grant is. This growth fund is reserved for

“strategically important internationally mobile investment or to address significant economic shocks.”

Perhaps we are undergoing a significant economic shock on account of the Labour Government’s fiscal approach, but are we really classifying a theme park as some sort of national interest project? No doubt it would be hugely beneficial to the economy, and I want to see Universal bring its billions here, but under fair auspices.

I asked at the House of Commons Library to look at every such motion since 2010. Every time this House has been asked to approve more than £30 million under section 8 of the Industrial Development Act, there is a clear pattern: support for energy-intensive industries and steel, which face high energy costs; emergency support for airports during covid; investment in electrical vehicle manufacturing and the life sciences; strategic industries; or support at a time of national crisis. Half a billion pounds of taxpayers’ money in the interests of a theme park, however, is a completely novel example.

I welcome the Minister stating that this was “international mobile investment”. She is right about that, but she did not include the preamble “strategically important”. We should ask the question: does Universal really need the deal to be sweetened in that way? When the then Housing Secretary granted planning permission for the scheme, he concluded that Universal did not need to demonstrate need, describing it as:

“a commercial judgement by the Promoter in the context of its analysis of the existing competition in the UK and the potential future market.”

Universal made a commercial judgment. As any good company should, it is investing because it believes that it will make a return on that investment. A Universal resort within a train ride of London—I have every reason to believe that it will be a success, and good for Universal, but for the Government to sign over £450 million of taxpayers’ money to sweeten the deal is wrong.

There is also an evidence issue here. I would not expect many members of this Committee to have looked at the Subsidy Advice Unit’s advice and the decision making behind it. That is part of why such a significant decision as this should not be taken in a Delegated Legislation Committee. The explanatory note we were provided with states that the grant has been reviewed by the unit, part of the Competition and Markets Authority,

“to ensure compliance with the Subsidy Control Act 2022.”

Members could be forgiven for reading that and concluding that the matter has been signed off. That is not what it means. The Subsidy Advice Unit does not rule on whether a subsidy is lawful; its job is to review the Department’s own assessment and to give advice on it. In this case, its advice found real shortcomings. It expressed concerns about proportionality, which is whether the £450 million is more than is needed; about the impact on competition, which is exactly the issue for businesses such as Legoland; and about how this grant interacts with the rest of the £1.3 billion package of public support for the same project.

Those are not minor points, and yet, as far as I know, the Department has not published its original assessment and it has not set out how it responded to any of the unit’s recommendations. This Committee is being asked to authorise up to £450 million without seeing the Department’s case or its answer to the independent advice that it received. We are being asked to approve first and see the evidence later. I do not think any of us should accept that for this scale of taxpayers’ money.

The Minister has committed to publishing the Department’s assessment and the response of the Subsidy Advice Unit—if I understand her remarks at the beginning correctly—before the money is paid. I thank her for that, but this Committee should not approve this motion until it has seen those. I must stress my concerns about this motion: it is not the right way to approve half a billion pounds in public spending, let alone spending that is so obviously anti-competitive and a boon to a global conglomerate. Frankly, even the Government’s own evidence base, on which the decision rests, is shaky. I hope that Members will reject this motion, so that it at least receives some further scrutiny in the House.