My Lords, it is a pleasure to open this group of amendments and to move my Amendment 6. This amendment boils down to just one word, which predates the investment principles of the bank, the objectives of the bank, the strategy of the bank, the framework document of the bank and everything else associated with the bank: additionality. That is the bank’s raison d’être—no additionality, no bank.
As mentioned in the first group of amendments, we have “roads” in the Bill but nothing about additionality. My Amendment 6 would seek to set out exactly what additionality means, how it covers crowding out as well as crowding in, and what multiple Treasury should set on that crowding in.
Government Amendment 23 is purely an amendment to review what the bank has done on crowding in after seven years. It says nothing on crowding out, hence why I support Amendment 24 in the name of my noble friend Lady Noakes, which I will say no more about.
My Amendment 6 covers both the end-point—the review—and the beginning, the mission the bank needs to be on. It is all well and good to have a review at the end of 10 years, or now seven, but without Amendment 6 the review is just the spectre of an individual walking backwards into the future, wringing hands about what the bank has done, either positively in achieving additionality or negatively. Although a review is significant and important, it always arrives a little too late to influence what has just happened.
It is critical that additionality is in the Bill for the benefit of the bank and for the private sector, which would have the confidence to know that the bank would operate to the threshold of additionality, which would have to be achieved or that specific investment would not be entered into. If the Minister cannot accept my amendment, would she commit to meeting with me between Report and Third Reading to look at what we can do to get additionality in the Bill to strengthen the position of the bank, to make projects far more likely to crowd in and not crowd out funding and, ultimately, to benefit everything we are trying to do in this infrastructure space? I beg to move.