Subsidy Control Bill

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 2nd February 2022 Grand Committee

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I sat here on Monday on the first day of Committee and I wondered how much of the replying Minister’s speech was written already—that is, Ministers were not responding to any of the good sense or good words that they heard from this side of the Room. It struck me that that should be seen as a little more important than it was on Monday.

This is an important group, because it is asking what we want to use the subsidies for, rather than just saying, “How do we want to control subsidies?” Supporting areas of deprivation has to be a core principle in our subsidy schemes and everything the Government do. We are very lucky now; we have a department for levelling up and we have a White Paper. Apparently, the White Paper points out how unequal the UK is. If you measure it on any economic or social metric, it is incredibly unequal. We have to ask: what have the Government been doing for the past 12 years? Of course, they are a Conservative Government, so clearly the levelling-up agenda is to mop up all the damage they have done in the past 12 years. Tackling deprivation and inequality will take a lot more than fine words, and streamlining subsidy schemes that are tailored to overcoming deprivation would be a good start.

Similarly, we should be making it easy for public authorities to support cultural and environmental objectives. I support noble Lords who have spoken so far, and I will be interested to hear the Minister’s response to Amendment 23, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, on this point, because it would be a great shame if the Bill were to interfere with achieving cultural and environmental objectives. We should concentrate on calculating social value as articulated in Amendment 36, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord McNicol of West Kilbride, as this is still a fledgling area of procurement practice and was one of the features of David Cameron’s early years as Prime Minister when he was still trying to do some good. The Government seem to have stalled on social value since then. If we can improve the methodology for calculating social value and properly embed it in procurement and subsidy schemes, every pound spent by the public sector will have a much greater benefit for our communities. It will help to tackle deprivation, benefit the environment and create flourishing local authorities. I hope the Minister can explain what the Government are doing to advance the social value agenda.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise to move Amendment 25A in my name. I shall not speak to any other amendments, because to some extent I am here as an amateur among experts. I have one point to make, which I hope I can do quite quickly. However, I support the general trend from my noble friend’s introduction and other noble Lords who have spoken.

I was unable to speak at Second Reading, because if I had I would have missed the sleeper to Cornwall, which I have to take. I am sorry about that. Many questions that come up are about how and what can replace the different bits of the EU competition regime. I got to know it quite well and got either to like or love it but at least to deal with it. My amendment covers everything that I think are subsidies, although when one looks at the definition of subsidies in the Bill it is unclear whether it covers a one-off payment or a series of payments or even what in the transport world is called the public service obligation. Perhaps somebody will refer me to where I have got it wrong in that instance.

In all these things, there seems to be nothing in the Bill about whether any particular subsidy, whatever anybody is talking about, is value for money or whether it has gone through the government procurement rules, which, in simple terms, means that it has gone out for three quotes or something like that. There may be many instances where that is not appropriate. I worry about whether this is just giving a blank cheque to Ministers or any local authority that chooses without any of the checks and balances. It may go to the CMA in the end, but to start with it is not there. This afternoon, we have been debating the PPE issue. I am not suggesting that was about the urgency for procurement. On the other hand, the urgency has long since passed, and that leaves a nasty taste in some people’s mouths.

My other reason for raising this is that I have been involved in a levelling-up plan for a ferry to the Isles of Scilly, which some noble Lords know about. The local authority applied for £48 million from the levelling-up fund to be given to one private company without any tendering. The noble Baroness, Lady Vere, has been very helpful and has tried to put my mind at rest that government procurement rules will be looked at here. However, there are two issues. I think they apply to many procurement issues that come into the category of subsidy control.

The first is: should it be given at all, and has the amount applied for been properly calculated? Has the authority gone out for competitive tenders or can it demonstrate that it is value for money? Secondly—this is often more difficult—is there a better way of doing it? I have given the example of Scilly, where a better way would be to do it with one ferry rather than two, for half the price. That is not part of a levelling-up application. On the other hand, somebody should be looking at things like this to make sure that the Government, or the taxpayer, are getting value for money.

That could apply to many projects which noble Lords have mentioned on levelling up, including no doubt the railway projects in the regions which my noble friend talked about. It would help me to understand whether there is any check in the Bill involving value for money and going out to competitive tendering, or not, to demonstrate that that has been done before a decision is taken to go ahead.