High Speed Rail (London - West Midlands) Bill (Third sitting)

Simon Burns Excerpts

Thursday 3rd March 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Sir Simon Burns (Chelmsford) (Con)]

I understand the point the hon. Gentleman is making. So we can understand the extent, will he tell us how much the public will have paid, or will pay?

[Andy McDonald]

Yes. By the time the process is concluded, we are talking somewhere in the region of £55 billion. I hope that answers the right hon. Gentleman’s question—

[Sir Simon Burns]

indicated assent.

[Andy McDonald]

I can see that the right hon. Gentleman is content.

The amendment is about working in the best interests of taxpayers and to ensure that they are not sold short. The taxpayer is our concern, not the private entity that might have transferred to it property and/or property rights which of themselves had been the product of the taxpayer’s significant investment—the sum of £55 billion, or thereabouts. Calls upon the nation’s tax receipts are onerous and to be used wisely, so it is essential that we ensure that those moneys that have created such valuable assets—money that could have served other urgent and serious demands in our communities—are not simply siphoned off into the private sector.

Our concerns are not idle ones, but are extremely well founded. We are dealing with a potential asset sale as I speak, namely the announcement by Network Rail of its intention to sell some 18 railway stations on the existing network. It is of immense concern that, should any such sales go ahead, the receipts will be those of a fair market valuation and not simply from a fire sale to reduce Network Rail’s debts. In advance of the Nicola Shaw review, we hear that Network Rail is to sell off 18 major stations, including Waterloo, Reading and Leeds, in an effort to cut its £50 billion debt. If memory serves me right, Reading has benefited from public investment of some £897 million. I am sure that the public will be watching carefully what happens to the ownerships of those and other named stations.

The same concerns apply to HS2. I am afraid that the Government have form and that we have less than good experience, to say the least, of sell-offs of publicly owned assets that failed to secure fair or market value for the taxpayer. We need cast our minds back no further than the disastrous sell-off of the Royal Mail, which is still fresh in the minds of millions of voters. The Select Committee on Business, Innovation and Skills found that taxpayers may have lost out on about £l billion from the undervaluing of Royal Mail. Apparently, the Government feared failure and acted on bad advice over the Royal Mail stock market flotation. As we know, the shares fluctuated widely with an initial price of 330p which jumped as high as 618p and now stands somewhat lower than that. The then Business Secretary, Vince Cable, said:

“They”—

presumably meaning the BIS Committee—

“now have the benefit of hindsight, which we didn’t have at the time. We sold at a price that was regarded as the best that could be achieved in the context in which we sold it.”

But the Chair of the BIS Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich West (Mr Bailey), said:

“It’s very important that when the government does sell off a government asset, it does so through a process that quite clearly demonstrates that nobody selling it, nobody advising it, has a conflict of interest”.

We do not want a repeat of the conduct of the likes of Lazards who were working on the inside on the sale of Royal Mail as Government advisers and then, because of the erection of an invisible virtual Chinese wall, were able to fill their boots on the acquisition of Royal Mail shares from the profits they achieved in a few short hours after launch. A number of individuals, some with high-profile political associations, also personally cashed in. We simply do not want HS2 to be turned into a profiteering exercise at the public’s expense.

You will recall the evidence unearthed by the Public Accounts Committee under the expert chairing of my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge). It revealed that Lazards advised the Government not to increase the price of Royal Mail shares, despite widespread fears they were hugely undervalued, and made a profit of more than £8 million by immediately selling the company’s stock. My right hon. Friend the Member for Barking said that Lazards

“made a killing at the expense of the ordinary taxpayer that lost £750 million in one day”.

A subsequent report by the National Audit Office found that the Government decided against increasing the flotation price of Royal Mail beyond 330p a share because of warnings from Lazard & Co. Government advisers were asked point blank at the Committee chaired by my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking how they could get it so wrong that it cost the taxpayer £750 million on that one day.

Vince Cable, the then Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, said that the postal service should,

“start its new life with a core of high-quality investors who would be there in good times and bad”.

So much for that hope, Mr Hanson. As you and I both know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.