Green Investment Bank

Mary Creagh Excerpts

Wednesday 11th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hurd]

My hon. Friend has made—much more eloquently than I have so far succeeded in doing—exactly the fundamental point that we are trying to convey. The test of an organisation that was set up to correct a market failure is whether that failure has indeed been corrected. We believe that it has, and our view is supported by the large amounts of private sector investment that are flowing into green infrastructure in the United Kingdom and around the world. What we must do now is ensure that the GIB is free and unfettered by the state, so that it can do more.

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

The Environmental Audit Committee’s report on the sale of the bank stated that Ministers had rushed to privatise it without consultation or proper consideration of the alternatives, and that either it should continue to exist as a low-carbon investor or its sale should not proceed. Taxpayers do not want a repeat of the Royal Mail debacle, when a public asset was sold off at £1.4 billion below its true value, and they do not want this landmark British institution to be sold off to an asset stripper.

Is it not extraordinary that the bank’s assets were restructured in November? Can the Minister tell us whether that was done at the request of the UK Shareholder Executive, to facilitate its sale to the preferred bidder?

[Mr Hurd]

I do not believe that that was the case at all, although I understand the points that the hon. Lady has made. Like any other Government, we have a responsibility to deliver value for money to taxpayers, and we are very conscious of the need for this deal, if it materialises, to present itself well to the public whom we serve and represent. That is why, as one would expect, value for money is at the top of our list of criteria. We are embarking on a very good process, and we are setting ourselves very high standards for the presentation of the deal.