"Thank you, Mr Crausby, for giving me the novel opportunity of winding up from the Front Bench. I will try to add a little to the debate briefly.
The hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart) is to be thanked for securing this debate and for providing such a …..." George Kerevan - View Speech
"Having spoken to the chief executive I totally concur. The bank wants the facility to borrow more money. After all, for it to be a bank rather than a fund it will need to be able to think strategically and have funds in place; as we all know, it takes …..." George Kerevan - View Speech
"The hon. Gentleman could not have made the case better. He has more chance of convincing the Chancellor than I have, so I am glad that, even if we achieve nothing else today, we have at least given him a public facility to make that point...." George Kerevan - View Speech
"I am hesitant to stray too far, as I am sure you would stop us having a general debate about capital borrowing, Mr Crausby. I agree in general with the hon. Lady that in essence, there is a strong distinction between capital borrowing, which produces an asset and a rate …..." George Kerevan - View Speech
"Indeed. The success of the Green Investment Bank has been in creating partnerships and a model of development. We are going to lose that. It is certainly the case—hon. Members on both sides of the House have alluded to this—that the strength of the Green Investment Bank is its staff …..." George Kerevan - View Speech
"I absolutely agree. Underlining the achievement of the climate change targets is a vast capital investment in major renewable energy projects. To date, the Green Investment Bank has invested in essentially small pilot projects, but the scale of overall investment needed to meet the climate change objectives is huge.
"The hon. Gentleman adds immeasurably to my contribution. Trust is a limited commodity, but in a sense, it is about how we add incrementally to get everybody around the table. The chief executive at the Green Investment Bank proved something fundamental by his ability to get people round the table. …..." George Kerevan - View Speech
"The hon. Gentleman may remember that the one form of energy the bank was specifically banned from investing in under EU state aid rules was nuclear. Once the bank goes into the private sector, that will no longer apply, and it will be open to the bank to invest in, …..." George Kerevan - View Speech
"Surely it was in the legislation, and in the way the bank was set up, that it could borrow. It is perfectly able to borrow. There is no prohibition on that. It is just that the Treasury does not want that notionally on its books. The bank can legally borrow …..." George Kerevan - View Speech
"I was merely correcting the Minister, who tried to give the impression that the bank cannot at the moment go to the markets and borrow. It can, and I think that the markets would in due course give it all the money it wanted, because it has been so successful. …..." George Kerevan - View Speech