Business of the House

Gareth Snell Excerpts

Thursday 28th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am sad to have to report to the House that Stoke-on-Trent City Council has developed a rather nasty habit of creating wholly owned companies, shovelling public money into them and then denying any proper public transparency or scrutiny of the decisions they make on spending that money. On Unitas and Fortior Homes in the city, we are now being told as MPs that freedom of information requests simply do not apply because they are commercial entities. Will the Leader of the House speak to her colleagues in either the Cabinet Office or the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and ask them to bring forward the necessary legislation to ensure that, where public money is involved—whether that be a wholly owned company or a company under contract—scrutiny will apply.

[Andrea Leadsom]

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman’s suggestion will be very popular. He is exactly right that the use of public money has to offer good value to taxpayers. Scrutiny is therefore essential so that people can see how their hard-earned taxpayers’ money is being used. We have MHCLG questions on Monday, and I recommend that the hon. Gentleman raises the matter directly with Ministers then.