Subsidy Control Bill

Debate between Nigel Mills and Angus Brendan MacNeil

2nd reading
Wednesday 22nd September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate and to follow the hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Stephen Flynn). I echo my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose) in broadly welcoming the Bill’s direction, and indeed its existence; I think that we need a robust subsidy control regime and I am glad that we are putting one in place.

I largely welcome the Government’s central decision to put parameters and rules in place and then trust public authorities to follow them, rather than having a very strict consent regime that would then become slow and cumbersome. I think that that is the right way to go, but it is intriguing to read the Bill and find a control regime that applies only if there is a

“subsidy…of interest or particular interest”,

neither of which terms is defined. At some point, a future Secretary of State could end up with quite a controlling regime by defining “particular interest” as any subsidy of more than half a million pounds, and then we would be back where we were.

It would be interesting to hear what the Minister thinks a “particular interest” might be and what the criteria might be for going into it, so that we know roughly where the line will be drawn, where the discretion for authorities is, and where we will start to expect mandatory or voluntary referral for advance clearance. I do not object to that process, because one of the key things for any subsidy regime is getting certainty so that when a business receives a subsidy, it knows that the rules have been followed, that it is entitled to it, and that there will not be a claim in six months’ or a year’s time that ends up with its having to repay the subsidy and being in worse distress than at the start. Having a regime with clearly drawn lines, so that everyone knows where they are and knows that once something is given it will stick, is hugely welcome. When we consider the Bill in more detail, it would be helpful to know where the line of discretion will be drawn.

The quid pro quo of a regime without intrusive up-front clearance is that we must have transparency on what is being paid, so that everyone knows that it is consistent with the rules and that some public authorities around the country are not misinterpreting them or, heaven forbid, deliberately doing things that they should not be doing. Clearly a risk in any subsidy regime is money being paid out in unlawful ways, so we want to be able to identify that situation pretty quickly.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

The hon. Gentleman is making some excellent points. I think that a Bill’s Second Reading is the time to test the arguments. He mentioned transparency, and a colleague of his debated a similar point with the SNP Front-Bench spokesperson, my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen South (Stephen Flynn). The crux of it comes back to the state aid point. In the European Union, there were 27 or 28 states and a very defined gamekeeper among all those poachers, namely the European Commission. The concern that I think SNP Members share is who the gamekeeper is and who the poachers are. Are the UK Government playing both gamekeeper and poacher in regards to subsidy? I am testing the arguments in this debate, but over time the Government will need to address the point and be very clear that they are not taking both sides, as poacher and gamekeeper.

[Nigel Mills]

I think that I understand the hon. Gentleman’s point. One attraction that I think the EU system had for the Treasury and occasionally for some politicians was that they could say, “We’d love to give you a grant to save your business, but tragically we’re not allowed to under EU rules,” when actually they did not want to because they knew it was not the right thing to do, so it was handy to have somebody else to blame. I think the Bill sets out that the CMA is the body that will or will not give clearance. It will not be Ministers doing that, so if the hon. Member wants a gamekeeper in this situation, I think it is the CMA.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

But is the CMA not a body of Westminster construction, as opposed to being a body of the Union?

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

Well, there are many Parliaments in this United Kingdom at the moment, and we know that each and every one should have the same voice. If this is the poacher and gamekeeper Parliament, surely that is a problem for Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales—that is the argument that I would postulate.

[Nigel Mills]

I think it is fair enough for a UK single market to have a single regulator that decides a subsidy regime to ensure that the application of the rules is consistent across the whole of that single market. The hon. Gentleman wants to go back into the EU single market, which has a single regulator which decides things across the whole of that its single market. He does not seem to accept that the EU single market should have the same arrangement.