Asked by: Gareth Davies (Conservative - Grantham and Bourne)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, with reference to Q110 of the oral evidence given by the Second Permanent Secretary to the Treasury Select Committee on 12 February 2025, how the risk framework of the National Wealth Fund differs from that of the UK Infrastructure Bank.
Answered by James Murray - Chief Secretary to the Treasury
The National Wealth Fund (NWF) are currently revising their risk management framework to reflect changes made from the UK Infrastructure Bank’s strategic objectives, economic capital and risk appetite. A revised version will be published on the NWF website in due course.
Asked by: Gareth Davies (Conservative - Grantham and Bourne)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, with reference to her Department's policy paper entitled National Wealth Fund: Mobilising Private Investment, published on 14 October 2024, what outreach work the National Wealth Fund has undertaken including but not limited to in-person and virtual meetings since 4 July 2024.
Answered by James Murray - Chief Secretary to the Treasury
The National Wealth Fund (NWF) and formerly the UK Infrastructure Bank, actively engages with various stakeholders to enhance the effectiveness and impact of its deals and local authority advisory services. By collaborating with a variety of stakeholders, the NWF ensures that its initiatives are well-informed and supported. This engagement is done through a variety of methods, including bilateral meetings, publications, consultations, and external events (including those hosted by the NWF). The mission of the NWF requires it to support rather than compete with the market and as such, they seek to engage openly with stakeholders.
More information about the engagement NWF undertakes with its stakeholders is set out on pages 73 to 75 of the Annual Report and Accounts National Wealth Fund Limited Annual report and accounts 2023-2024
Asked by: Gareth Davies (Conservative - Grantham and Bourne)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what (a) in-person meeting, (b) virtual meeting and (c) other outreach work the UK Infrastructure Bank undertook between 17 June 2021 and 4 July 2024.
Answered by James Murray - Chief Secretary to the Treasury
The National Wealth Fund (NWF) and formerly the UK Infrastructure Bank, actively engages with various stakeholders to enhance the effectiveness and impact of its deals and local authority advisory services. By collaborating with a variety of stakeholders, the NWF ensures that its initiatives are well-informed and supported. This engagement is done through a variety of methods, including bilateral meetings, publications, consultations, and external events (including those hosted by the NWF). The mission of the NWF requires it to support rather than compete with the market and as such, they seek to engage openly with stakeholders.
More information about the engagement NWF undertakes with its stakeholders is set out on pages 73 to 75 of the Annual Report and Accounts National Wealth Fund Limited Annual report and accounts 2023-2024
Asked by: Gareth Davies (Conservative - Grantham and Bourne)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, with reference to her Department's policy paper entitled National Wealth Fund: Mobilising Private Investment, published on 14 October 2024, what were the previous constraints in relation to the amount of economic risk capital of the UK Infrastructure Bank.
Answered by Emma Reynolds - Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
The most important constraint on the National Wealth Fund’s risk appetite is its economic capital risk budget, which limits the total risk exposure it can hold. The UK Infrastructure Bank had £22 billion of notional financial capacity and an economic risk capital budget of £4.5 billion. This was set by HM Treasury when UKIB was established. As part of UKIB's transformation into the National Wealth Fund, HM Treasury will agree a larger amount of economic risk capital, the details of which will be published in due course.
Asked by: Gareth Davies (Conservative - Grantham and Bourne)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, with reference to Q110 of the oral evidence given by the Second Permanent Secretary to the Treasury Select Committee on 12 February 2025, which financial instruments will be available to the National Wealth Fund which were not already available to the UK Infrastructure Bank.
Answered by Emma Reynolds - Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
The Chancellor announced at the International Investment Summit on 14th October 2024 that the UK Infrastructure Bank (UKIB) would be transformed into the National Wealth Fund (NWF), building on UKIB’s expertise and leadership. To empower the NWF to maximise mobilisation of private investment, the Chancellor committed to expanding the suite of financial instruments available to the NWF over time. Legislation enabling the NWF to issue the first of these new instruments, performance guarantees, will be laid for consideration by Parliament in this Financial Year.
The NWF is also collaborating with Government departments on new blended finance solutions which take on additional risk, crowd in private capital and support the most effective and catalytic use of public funds.
Asked by: Gareth Davies (Conservative - Grantham and Bourne)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what estimate she has made of future trends in the level of the (a) State Pension and (b) Income tax personal allowance threshold; and whether her Department forecasts the State Pension to exceed the income tax personal allowance.
Answered by James Murray - Chief Secretary to the Treasury
The Government is committed to ensuring that older people are able to live with the dignity and respect they deserve, and the State Pension is the foundation of state support for older people. The Government is committed to the Triple Lock for the duration of this parliament, and in April 2025, the basic and new State Pension will increase by 4.1%. This means that pensioners on a full new State Pension will get a boost of £470 to their incomes from April this year. Over the course of this Parliament, the yearly amount of the full new State Pension is currently forecast to go up by around £1,900, based on the Office for Budget Responsibility’s latest forecast.
The previous Government made the decision to freeze the income tax Personal Allowance at its current level of £12,570 until April 2028. At our first Budget, we decided not to extend the freeze on personal tax thresholds, meaning they will rise with inflation from April 2028.
Asked by: Gareth Davies (Conservative - Grantham and Bourne)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether her Department has plans to create a business tax roadmap including taxes such as secondary Class 1 National Insurance Contributions.
Answered by James Murray - Chief Secretary to the Treasury
The Government published the Corporate Tax Roadmap at Autumn Budget 2024. This Roadmap confirms the major features of the Corporation Tax regime for the duration of this Parliament. The Roadmap reflects the particular importance of Corporation Tax to significant business investment decisions. It also reflects the high appetite for policy stability on Corporation Tax following the considerable changes of approach in recent years.
Raising the revenue required to fund public services and restore economic stability meant the Government has had to take difficult decisions on tax, which is why we asked employers to contribute more. The Government recognises the need to protect the smallest employers which is why we have more than doubled the Employment Allowance to £10,500, meaning more than half of businesses with NICs liabilities either gain or see no change next year. Businesses will still be able to claim employer NICs reliefs including those for under 21s and under 25 apprentices, where eligible.
Asked by: Gareth Davies (Conservative - Grantham and Bourne)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what fiscal steps she is taking to support the purchase of zero-emission and low-emission vehicles.
Answered by James Murray - Chief Secretary to the Treasury
The Government is fully committed to the transition to electric vehicles. At Autumn Budget 2024, the Government announced £2.3bn of funding for the automotive sector up to 2030 to support the transition to Zero Emission Vehicles. The Government also announced £120m of funding in 2025-26 to support the purchase of new electric vans via the plug-in vehicle grant and to support the manufacture of wheelchair accessible ZEV vehicles.
The Government also provides favourable taxation rates. At Autumn Budget the Government announced new Company Car Tax rates for 2028-29 and 2029-30 which will maintain generous incentives to support electric vehicle take-up.
More widely, HMG provides a range of measures to support people to transition to Zero Emission Vehicles. For instance, over £200 million for 2025-26 was announced at Budget to accelerate EV chargepoint rollout, including funding to support local authorities to install on-street chargepoints across England.
Asked by: Gareth Davies (Conservative - Grantham and Bourne)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether her Department has plans to align the British Business Bank under the National Wealth Fund.
Answered by Emma Reynolds - Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
The National Wealth Fund (NWF) is the UK’s impact investor, mobilising billions of pounds of investment in the UK’s world-leading clean energy and growth industries. The British Business Bank (BBB) continues to be responsible for improving access to finance for SMEs, including new programmes to channel venture investment into the UK’s fastest growing, most innovative companies and closing the scaleup capital gap.
The NWF and the BBB work in close partnership to deliver the government’s industrial strategy in line with their respective mandates, maintaining a coordinated and complementary approach to tackling finance gaps and boosting economic growth. The government will continue to review how these institutions operate and interact with the market, government departments and each other to ensure that they are as effective as possible in mobilising private investment and delivering economic growth.
Asked by: Gareth Davies (Conservative - Grantham and Bourne)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, if she will make an estimate of the number of staff within the National Wealth Fund that did not previously work for the UK Infrastructure Bank.
Answered by Darren Jones - Minister for Intergovernmental Relations
The Chancellor announced at the International Investment Summit on 14th October 2024 that the UK Infrastructure Bank would be transformed into the National Wealth Fund (NWF), This change took effect on that day. All UKIB staff were retained as part of the NWF.
To realise its ambition to catalyse more private investment and accelerate investable projects coming to market across the UK, the NWF will be expanding its team based at its headquarters in Leeds.
The number of roles at the NWF will be published in the “Staff Report” within the NWF’s Annual Report of Accounts, published following the end of this financial year.