Clause 23
Housing and Regeneration Bill
5:30 pm
George Young (North West Hampshire, Conservative)
I have one or two small points. Looking at subsection (1) about the short-term borrowings of the HCA, will those fall within the financial limits referred to in clause 26 or will they be outside the £2,300 million that is set as the financial limit? Perhaps the Minister could clarify whether they are within the overall limit.
Subsection (1) refers to the short-term management of the HCA’s finances. In the days when we used to have bank managers and I used to talk to them, I often found that their interpretation of a short-term arrangement was somewhat different from my own. I wonder whether there is a definition of a short-term arrangement that would make it absolutely clear whether borrowing fell within subsection (1), or whether it was on a longer term arrangement.
Turning to subsection (2), which is more serious for long-term borrowing, I am intrigued about the HCA’s rather restrictive line of credit. It has to borrow either from the Secretary of State or the European Investment Bank. I am not one of those in my party who gets frantically excited about matters European, but it would be helpful to have an explanation of why the European Investment Bank, alone among many other banks, has the privileged status of being the only one that can lend serious money to the HCA.