Brexit: European Investment Bank (European Union Committee Report)

Viscount Trenchard Excerpts

Tuesday 16th July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Trenchard (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner of Margravine, on securing this much-needed debate and on having been such an excellent chairman of the EU Financial Services Sub-Committee, which I joined too late to have any input into this report. It is a privilege for me to follow her and to serve on the sub-committee.

The EIB has been a major investor in the UK since our EU accession in 1973. As the noble Baroness has already noted, the cumulative amount of EIB funding for UK projects since then is €118 billion, and it accounted for about a third of UK infrastructure investment in 2015. The European Investment Fund, 62% owned by the EIB, has also been an important investor in UK venture capital, facilitating access to finance for SMEs. The European Commission is also a significant shareholder, and 11.8% of the shares are held by private financial institutions.

Since 2015, EIB lending to the UK has declined by 88%, from €7.8 billion to €932 million in 2018. Similarly, EIF investment in the UK fell by 91% between 2016 and 2017. Such dramatic declines are obviously not based on objective assessment of the economics and quality of available investment opportunities in the UK. That will not surprise readers of yesterday’s FT article on the EIB, written by Rochelle Toplensky and Alex Barker. They quote the president of the EIB, Werner Hoyer, as saying:

“I am sometimes surprised that political leaders are not aware what kind of instrument they have in their hands”.


The EIB is,

“a political instrument. It serves a political purpose”.

The EIB’s balance sheet totals €556 billion—twice the size of the World Bank and more than 10 times the size of the EBRD. It makes a profit of about €2 billion a year and is very conservatively managed. Questions have recently been raised about the bank’s role and governance, and a,

“high-level group of wise persons”,

to use the typical nuanced EU-speak phrase, has begun to examine how it could operate independently of the EU. There is talk of splitting or relocating a part of its operations.

The shareholders, or members, of the EIB are the member states, and it is unclear whether a sensible future relationship post Brexit could be negotiated. Although the EIB can lend to third countries for development purposes—in 2017 approximately 10% of its lending was to around 150 partner countries—the political declaration stated merely that,

“the Parties note the United Kingdom’s intention to explore options for a future relationship”.

However, I tend to agree with the view expressed by Mr Tim Hames of the BVCA—that it is just not worth going through some convoluted arrangement to attempt to revise the EIB’s statutes so as to remain some kind of member and then end up putting in more money than we will get out. To do so would also require EU treaty change and it seems most unlikely that that could be quickly and smoothly negotiated.

Chapter 4 of Part 5 of the draft withdrawal agreement sets out what the Government had agreed with the EU concerning the UK’s relationship with the EIB after Brexit. Article 150 is mainly about the UK’s continuing liability for financial operations and risks entered into by the EIB up to the date of leaving. Paragraph 4 states that the EIB will return the UK’s paid-in subscribed capital, amounting to some €3.5 billion. This represents our shareholding of 16.1% of the paid-in subscribed capital, as the noble Baroness has already noted.

It seems extraordinary that we agreed to accept only the return of our paid-in capital. It is of course logical that we should also be entitled to receive our 16.1% share of the retained earnings. Adding in this amount, the net tangible assets attributable to our stake amount to €11.1 billion, more than three times what we have agreed to accept. Worse, the repayment of our paid-in capital is to take place over 12 years, until December 2030, without any payment of dividends or interest.

Furthermore, besides the marked decline in funding of UK projects since the referendum, from €7 billion in 2016 to less than €1 billion in 2018, Article 151 makes it clear that UK projects shall not be eligible for new investments from the EIB Group funding reserved for member states—which is of course the vast majority of it. To cap it all, the UK is to remain liable for its 16.1% share of the uncalled but committed capital in respect of the EIB’s financial operations as at the time of withdrawal. That could amount to a call of up to a further €35.7 billion. Given the conservative, risk-averse investment policy of the EIB, it is relatively unlikely that calls on this will be made. Nevertheless, this huge liability seems likely to survive our departure from the EU by more than 11 years.

Does my noble friend the Minister not agree that the terms of the disposal of our interest in the EIB are staggeringly poor from the UK’s point of view, and quite extraordinarily beneficial from the EU’s point of view? Why did we agree such terrible terms? The EIB may be a strange animal, and the Minister may tell me that the UK is not a shareholder because the EIB has members and not shareholders. But I learned in my first week in the corporate finance department at Kleinwort Benson that the members of a company are the shareholders: members are basically synonymous with shareholders. Why did we agree such a very slow return of our capital anyway and why did we agree that our liability for uncalled capital survives our leaving the EU and does not decline pari passu with our remaining shareholding? Why did we agree to give away our €7.6 billion share of the retained earnings? It is disappointing that the Government have not responded to the report’s request for a cogent explanation of the rationale for the position taken in the negotiations. I am hoping that the Minister will make good this omission when he winds up this debate.

It is very clear that we need to accelerate planning for a replacement for the EIB and I welcome the Government’s agreement to consider that as part of their current Infrastructure Finance Review. The National Infrastructure Forum has recommended the creation of a British investment bank and the National Infrastructure Commission is among those calling for the establishment of a new UK infrastructure bank. Germany’s KfW would perhaps be an appropriate model. Universities UK, which is also suffering from an abrupt decline in funding, also supports the report’s call for the Government to extend the UK Guarantees scheme. The report also welcomed the Government’s commitment to increase the resources of the British Business Bank when the UK loses access to the EIF. Of course, the UK in fact lost access to the EIF two years ago, de facto if not de jure. More needs to be done, and done quickly.