Subsidy Control Bill

Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 7th February 2022 Grand Committee

[Baroness Altmann (Con)]

My Lords, I support these amendments. I support the aim of a more flexible scheme than the EU has, and I welcome the Government’s commitment to introduce transparency to their new subsidy scheme, but, as others have explained, this Bill potentially reduces transparency.

The amendments in this group had strong support in the other place, not least from our honourable friends John Penrose and Kevin Hollinrake. I also thank the Centre for Public Data, which has worked with them to provide information to help the Government achieve what they want to achieve perhaps in a better way, which is what these amendments may enable to be done.

I support the use of subsidies to achieve the levelling-up agenda and the net-zero agenda. I think that we all realise that regional growth and infrastructure need an extra boost now. However, can the aim of reducing central control of subsidies and relying on transparency, so that interested parties can challenge subsidies that they believe are unlawful, be achieved by a process whereby those interested parties will not know that there is a subsidy unless it is more than £0.5 million and there could be a series of subsidies just below that which could amount to quite substantial sums? It would help me understand how this aim could be realised if the transparency that I think we could rely on cannot be achieved because the database does not include a record of those very subsidies that are meant to be challenged. I suggest that this seems somewhat illogical, and I urge my noble friend either to bring back his own amendments on Report or to consider accepting these amendments.

[Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (CB)]

I just want to add one very brief word. In a number of the amendments today and on Wednesday, we are really concerned with the movement from the regime that has existed in the EU to a regime more of self-policing. All these amendments interlock, and at the end of the day we will need to pull them together and see how we effect for this country a proper and workable regime.

This amendment deals with one court—the court of public opinion—and we shall turn to the CAT and the Competition and Markets Authority in due course, but it seems to me that, on each of these, the Government have an option. They have to do something to make the move away from the control of state subsidies in the way that the EU did to a more liberal and generous regime. But experience ought by now to have told this Government that, unless there are clear transparency and other mechanisms in place, we will end up with something that will cause more of a problem than we had under the old system. I warmly support these amendments.

[Lord Wigley (PC)]

My Lords, I shall speak to these amendments very briefly. This has been a bipartisan debate, and there is a consensus across the Committee that amendments along these lines can improve the working of the Bill and make it more acceptable in the court of public opinion. I urge the Minister, if he cannot accept the amendments as they stand today, to consider at least bringing forward his own amendments at the appropriate time.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (CB)]

My Lords, I warmly support the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, in this amendment. Earlier this afternoon, I spoke about the centrality of enforcement in the regime introduced under this Bill. I need not repeat what I said then, but it is important to look at the mechanism of enforcement.