Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what his policy is on the registration and declaration of interests by members of Boards of Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEP); and what steps is he taking to improve standards of transparency in LEP Boards.

This is taxpayers’ money and we will be working with every LEP to improve transparency which will enable us to follow every pound of public money spent. Just last month we published a strengthened National Assurance Statement which set out the requirement for LEPs to have a published conflict of interest policy; a published register of interests covering all decision-makers, which is kept updated; and a published complaints policy.