"I appreciate that the Minister cannot be tempted to comment on what might or might not be in the Queen’s Speech, but based on what Lord Agnew said, if it were to be true, I please urge the Minister to consider that it will be about as popular as a …..." John Penrose - View Speech
"I rise to speak to the amendments in my name and that of my hon. Friends. I start by saying that there is a great deal to support about this Bill, and I think I mentioned that on Second Reading. This Bill is vitally important, not just because it is …..." John Penrose - View Speech
"My hon. Friend makes a very good point. For those of us who worry about the scale of subsidies, who take pride in ours being a relatively low-subsidy country and economy and who want it to stay that way—we do so because we care about competitiveness and people competing only …..." John Penrose - View Speech
"That is absolutely right. Transparency is of course about trying to improve the productivity of our economy and avoiding distortions of our economy, and of course it is also about trying to reduce cronyism, but my hon. Friend is right to say that there is a longer-term benefit in that …..." John Penrose - View Speech
"Absolutely; my hon. Friend makes an important point. Equally, the point about cost goes more broadly than that too. We heard about the cumulative threshold where, if a single company receives multiple different grant applications or subsidies that collectively go above £315,000 over three years, that is supposed to be …..." John Penrose - View Speech
"That is absolutely right. Although I appreciate that there is a technical distinction between amounts of subsidy and amounts of general local authority spend, it is a very strong comparison. If it is worthwhile recording £500 spend on anything by a local council, why are subsidies so special and why …..." John Penrose - View Speech
"That is absolutely right. It is not just about whether a particular subsidy breaches those principles, but as the hon. Member rightly points out, it is also a question of whether we can then spot that a pattern of cronyism is emerging. If a particular local council was giving out …..." John Penrose - View Speech
"May I back the hon. Lady up by saying that it is about not just smaller businesses, but local economic effects? Something that may, on a large scale, be distortive for the entire national economy may be distortive at a much smaller level for a particular city region or a …..." John Penrose - View Speech
"I am listening carefully to the hon. Lady. I am sure everybody here would agree with the principle of trying to level up, particularly in parts of the UK outside London and the south-east, but can she address the point I was making about politicians having a long and really …..." John Penrose - View Speech
"May I just caution my hon. Friend? I think the paraphrase of his argument about the size of the subsidy database is that big databases are less transparent than small ones. That is clearly bonkers and not right, and I do not think it stands up to any scrutiny. He …..." John Penrose - View Speech