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Identifying Growth Sectors in the South East Economy

I hesitate to express a view on the relative states of knowledge of the Minister and the Business Secretary, but my hon. Friend makes a cogent point. Before I turn to some of the schemes that the Government have proposed in an attempt to alleviate some of the worst effects of the recession, I ought to return to the sentence from paragraph 91 of the Select Committee report that I quoted earlier, which referred to the confusion and uncertainty that existed in the Government’s own schemes. I was absolutely astonished by the intervention of the hon. Member for South Thanet, who, in his rebuke to me, advanced a completely novel reason for the existence of regional development agencies. He said that if I had read the rest of the paragraph, I would have seen that SEEDA had taken steps to correct the uncertainty and confusion that have been created by the Government. So now we know that regional development agencies exist to remedy the uncertainty and confusion caused by Government. Would it not be better, and save a greater deal of money, if that confusion and uncertainty had been avoided in the first place? Let us look at some of the Government’s schemes, such as the capital for enterprise fund. The fund was announced in the pre-Budget report on 24 November 2008, implemented on 14 January 2009 and took until May 2009 to make its first investments. It has £75 million available to provide equity and what is described as quasi-equity for companies with a turnover of up to €40 million—I am sorry to have used the designation of euros, but that is apparently the currency in which the limit has been designated by the Government—and have viable business models and growth potential. The first investment was six months after the scheme was announced—six months. The answer to a written parliamentary question on 20 May 2009 indicated that £9 million of the £75 million had been provided to eight businesses—not an impressive record. But as is so often the case with this Government, things are not quite what they seem. On 13 August—the parliamentary answer having been given on 20 May—Lord Mandelson announced that a software firm based in Bedford had become the first business to receive investment from that fund. I should like to know what the truth is behind that obvious and blatant inconsistency. Did all eight businesses referred to in the parliamentary answer on 20 May refuse the money that had been apparently provided to them, or was Lord Mandelson, carried away by the need for a headline during his week in charge of the Government and guilty, not for the first time, of a lapse of memory when he claimed credit for the first such investment on 13 August? I hope the Minister can shed some light on that inconsistency, and perhaps he is able to tell us the truth. If Lord Mandelson is right, it does not say much for the scheme—it took nearly nine months since the announcement of the scheme in November 2008 for the first investment to be made. That is the sad story of the capital for enterprise fund. What about the automotive assistance programme? The scheme was announced on 27 January 2009 and was intended to make available £2.3 billion in loan guarantees and £35 million for training. Various parliamentary answers show that there have been many requests for information about the scheme, in which some are being ““taken forward in more detail””, and some projects are said to be ““in the pipeline””. But as yet, or at least as at the date of the parliamentary answer on 21 July, no money—not a single penny—has reached a single firm that might be eligible for assistance under the scheme. So here again, a grandiose Government scheme, launched with great fanfare, is not making any contribution to growth sectors, or to maximise growth or to alleviate the effects of the recession.