Lord Macpherson of Earl’s Court (CB)

My Lords, this is an interesting and important amendment that goes to the heart of Treasury control. Historically, it is fair to say that, when it came to nationalised industries, the Treasury set external finance limits that were not subject to constraints ex ante from Parliament. The proposal to borrow is definitely the right one. I recall having to jump through extraordinary hoops to enable the Crown Estate to invest in creating special purpose vehicles, usually with foreign sovereign wealth funds, to support the financing of investment. So moving to give the Crown Estate borrowing powers is the right approach. The question then is: to what extent do those need to be constrained by Parliament? There are precedents. For example, Scotland is constrained in the quantity of its borrowing. However, the Crown Estate has more in common with nationalised industries. I hope that the Minister will confirm that in each Budget and spending review, the Treasury will publish three-year to five-year plans for the external financing limit of the Crown Estate. This will allow Parliament to scrutinise those proposals along with the rest of the Budget but should not require overarching constraint in legislation, which would effectively constrain the Treasury’s decisions on who should borrow across government and how best to allocate borrowing resources.