Sorry; I withdraw that. If the Minister were sitting in the opposition seat and opposing this Bill—or, indeed, opposing its use—he would, I am sure, find it very difficult. That is why it is to the enormous
credit of Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition that they are standing hard against this Bill. I am sure that they harbour a view that, in time, they will find themselves in government and the temptation for them—indeed, for any Government—to use these powers would be quite high. It is therefore to the Opposition’s credit that, together, we are seeking to put some transparency into this.
At Second Reading, I said that the more flexibility and opacity there is in the subsidy system, the more opportunity there will be for subsidies to be directed for political purposes. I did not use the phrase “pork barrel” but I should have, because there is no other way of explaining how almost seven-eighths of the £1-billion English towns fund goes to Conservative-held seats. There is no way to explain how that money goes there other than political direction. I am sure that the Minister will tell me that there is a formula. There is a formula for almost anything; if you know what you want to create, you build the formula to achieve it. We are already seeing that. I assume that schemes like that will be rolled into a subsidy scheme so that we never see the granularity by seat. This is perhaps our last chance to point to that evidence before it all gets rolled up and aggregated so that we cannot disassemble it.
As we look at this Bill, we should look at the future of subsidies in this country, not the short-term gain for a political party. That is what we are seeing at the moment: a short-term gaming, or potential gaming, of the subsidy system. That is why this amendment was moved and why we have had an interesting short debate on it. I will be interested to see whether the Minister decides to engage at all, because sometimes he just does not. If he does decide to engage, I will be very interested to hear what he has to say.