Subsidy Control Bill — House of Commons, 2021-09-22
Topic: Government Operations
Kevin Paul Hollinrake (Conservative, Centre-right): I know that is the hon. Member’s question, but I think it is the wrong question. For me, the key question is whether the subsidy is going to spend taxpayers’ money well. We can claim success not just by giving more money away than was wasted, but when the taxpayers’ money that is used proves fruitful. We should not be disappointed that we have had one of the lower subsidy levels of the countries compared today. We should be proud of believing that our businesses should stand on their own two feet. Nevertheless, I do support on occasion the Government and other public authorities providing subsidies in certain areas and for certain things I welcome the Bill. I know that the Minister will ensure that it receives good scrutiny and passes through its different stages. I echo the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose), in that my key point is about having a greater level of scrutiny and transparency. The No. 1 reason for transparency is that, as my hon. Friend said, Governments of all shades are pretty poor at picking winners, so it is important that Governments and public authorities are held to account for their decisions to grant subsidies, which are taxpayers’ money and must therefore be spent well The hon. Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney) made an important point about cronyism. Some of the claims of cronyism in procurement that we have heard today are unsubstantiated and have been shown to be inaccurate in the National Audit Office report. People who claim otherwise bring shame on every single Member of this House; it is a flawed method of political point scoring that is deeply unhelpful. The National Audit Office clearly said that Ministers were not involved in procurement decisions Nevertheless, I believe in scrutiny and complete transparency, particularly when significant amounts of money—up to half a million pounds in some schemes, as we can see from the legislation—can be handed out by a local authority or devolved region, without scrutiny. Some local authorities have better reputations than others when it comes to spending money, so it is really important that we can see exactly what local authorities and devolved Administrations are doing. My right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Dame Andrea Leadsom) brought up this point. If we do not see a level of scrutiny, different parts of the country could try to use different means of creating some advantage, or indeed try to raise grievances, which is something that we hear not too infrequently in this place I absolutely support the proposal to reduce the threshold for scrutiny and transparency from the current level of £500,000, or £315,000 for cumulative subsidies outside a scheme, to a much lower level of £500. As a businessperson myself—I declare an interest—I would have no objection to declaring any taxpayers’ money we had received in our business. I think the only time we have ever received it was through the furlough scheme and the coronavirus business interruption loan scheme, which we returned without drawing on it. If we are taking taxpayers’ money, we should be accountable for it, whatever level it is at. I think the only objection that could be raised to a much lower limit would be creating red tape, but according to the research I have seen, there is a minimal amount of red tape and a minimal amount of cost—about £20,000. This simplifies matters in many areas In all the different cases where things have gone wrong—I deal with lots of cases of fraud and malpractice in all kinds of different financial markets—the key element of scrutiny and transparency in identifying wrongdoing has usually come from members of the public, who are perhaps closer to the ground than our regulators. If the database is made fully public, we are more likely to pick up on wrongdoing. Members of the public, and members of the press, do a fantastic job in tracking down this kind of wrongdoing I urge the Government to look at the threshold and bring it down to a much lower level. Aside from that, I welcome the Bill and look forward to the comments of my hon. Friend the Minister.