My Lords, the main aim of this amendment is to firm up how and in what form the Secretary of State must prepare and lay before both Houses of Parliament a report on the activities and investments of the UK Green Investment Bank. The amendment is largely self-explanatory, but it may be for the benefit of the Committee if I raise one general and a couple of specific points.
As I mentioned before, relying on the reports generated under the Companies Act 2006 introduces significant timing problems, as these reports will be generally arranged for an AGM often some months after the year end. A report for Parliament, if it were different, can be much more up to date and therefore more relevant to those who have to discuss it. The focus of Companies Act reports are the stakeholders, mainly in conventional companies. These would be the dispersed institutional and private shareholders and not the
public interest represented by Parliament. It is therefore sensible to recognise that, although initially the Crown interest will be the only shareholding interest, that will not be identical with the public interest, and different reporting might therefore be required.
Proposed new paragraphs (a) and (b) in the amendment would give Parliament a feel for the activity that the bank has been undertaking on the ground, and bring the reality of the bank's operations to life. It would be unusual for Companies Act reports to deal with specific investments in this way.
Paragraph (c) would assess the way in which the bank is achieving value for money for its investments, and draw parliamentary attention to value for money and efficiency—again an approach that would not commonly be found in company reports.
Unusually for institutions in the public sector, the bank will have to be familiar with risk in all its forms and across its investments, and the wider economic climate will also need to be referred to as well as the appetite that individual investors will have for risk. This is an important area that we think the report should deal with.
It would be of considerable concern if the Green Investment Bank were to displace investment already available in the market, which we have already touched on in our debate this afternoon. So a specific report in that area would be helpful in understanding how the bank was progressing, and in assessing how successful it was in the marketplace.
The final point brings us back to corporate behaviours, and assisting Parliament to judge whether the bank was addressing concerns on such matters as pay and bonuses and ethical behaviours more generally.
I hope that the Minister will accept that with this amendment we are trying to be helpful. We have some common ground in assisting Parliament in getting material which is better suited to its particular role. I do not think that that will necessarily come out of the companies’ reports and I hope that the amendment will stimulate those who have to prepare them to come up with more appropriate solutions for the reporting that is necessary. I beg to move.