It has been an extremely high-quality debate and I will attempt, in my half of the one hour and 50 minutes that we have left, to do justice in responding on behalf of Her Majesty’s official Opposition.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart) both on leading the campaign to secure this extremely important and timely debate and on his excellent speech. The Chair of the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright), also said that it was an excellent speech, and it set up our debate today well. The hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness outlined examples of Green Investment Bank investments extremely well, including some in his own locality. Early on he put his finger on the key issue of the future of the green focus of the bank after privatisation.
The hon. Gentleman said that he thought the Green Investment Bank was vital to the UK’s industrial strategy—he obviously did not get the memo from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills that the
term “industrial strategy” is not to be used any more, but nevertheless he happens to be absolutely right. The bank is vital and we do need an industrial strategy that includes a focus on green investment and renewables as an absolutely essential part of the economic future of this country.
As I listened to the hon. Gentleman’s contribution, I became ever more convinced, as someone new to this brief who did not sit on the relevant Bill Committee or anything of that kind, that the proposal, as it stands, is not oven-ready. Whatever the Minister has to say at the end, I think that Ministers will have to go back and look at the issue in some detail. I know that discussions are going on in another place, but it seems to me that this is far from an oven-ready proposal.
We also heard a contribution from the Chair of the Select Committee on Business, Innovation and Skills, my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool, who, as ever, was extremely assured and knowledgeable. He spoke very well about the role of state development banks more broadly and internationally, and how important they are. He said that, in a way, the UK is an outlier among G7 countries in not having such an institution and that we should not lightly put the Green Investment Bank into jeopardy, given the role that it can play in helping to develop that sort of approach in the UK.
We also heard a contribution from the hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Philip Boswell)—that constituency name has changed since the last Parliament, so excuse me if I did not get it quite right. His contribution was also very effective; he told us about the local impact of the Green Investment Bank, particularly in Scotland. He took an intervention from the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) about China; it crossed our mind over here at the time that China could well end up owning the Green Investment Bank in quite a short space of time, given the way things are going. We should perhaps cogitate for a while on that prospect.
Finally, the hon. Member for East Lothian (George Kerevan), again, made a very effective contribution to our debate, raising a lot of new and interesting points in addition to the ones that had already been made. He was intervened on by the hon. Member for Warrington South (David Mowat) in relation to the position of the Green Investment Bank’s CEO, Shaun Kingsbury. Yesterday, when Mr Kingsbury gave evidence to the Environmental Audit Committee, he made it absolutely clear that he would have liked a statutory lock to remain with regard to the focus and purpose of the Green Investment Bank. He also said, unless I am mistaken, that he remained agnostic about exactly what sort of stake the Government should have in the bank, rather than being a wholesale cheerleader for privatisation. He accepted that that might be the right route for the future of the bank, but unless I misheard him he said he was ultimately agnostic about the level of skin in the game, as it were, that the Government should have in relation to the bank.
The hon. Member for East Lothian also pointed out very effectively that the Treasury was all too ready to allow UK borrowing to be part of the financing of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, yet seemed extremely reluctant to allow the same for our own Green Investment Bank. If the bank is a flagship, innovative policy of the last Government, which I think it is, actually—it was
initially conceived even before that, during the previous Government—it will be a terrible shame if the Government are not willing to do for our own Green Investment Bank what they have done for the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.
I thought that the hon. Gentleman very effectively described the way in which market failure could be countered by the presence of a Green Investment Bank with an honest broker role—not just like any other bank in the business. He also put a fairly effective bomb under the argument about the articles of association being the protection that could replace the statutory protection that the Government intend to remove. He also made a very interesting alternative funding proposal.
We have covered quite a lot of ground, very effectively, during the course of this debate. I hope that the Minister has the opportunity to respond to some of those points in his contribution, although he may not have enough time to respond to them all; if necessary, I hope that he will take back to the Department what hon. Members have said during the debate.