Chamber and committees

We are talking about loans here, but was there ever a prospect that they were going to be repaid? We had a business that was clearly suffering from lack of liquidity and that needed all sorts of concessions on its contract in order to get payments to keep it ticking over, yet we were giving it loans. On what rational financial basis was that done?

The letter.

Were you not concerned that tens of millions of pounds were being flushed down the toilet, with no way to ascertain what was happening to the money?

At what point did you become aware that relationships between CMAL and FMEL had broken down?

Was the purpose of the investment the purchase of share stock?

Okay. Thank you for that clarification.

I turn to something other than chasing pieces of paper. I would like to chase the money. An awful lot of money has gone into FMEL, and I will go through that in more detail in a second. FMEL received more than £128 million of public money. What attempts have been made to identify what it was spent on? When the company was nationalised, there was only about £8 million in total assets in the company, yet substantial loans and payments of tens of millions had been made. What attempts were made to find out whether the money was spent appropriately?

In the Rural Economy and Connectivity Committee report from December 2020, it is clear that milestones were fabricated, and there is reference to that not being unusual in the industry. To me, that is extraordinary.

[Inaudible.]—a quarter of the money put up front, to enable them to purchase materials?

So, actually, the terms of the loan were not fulfilled by the supplier.

Derek Shaw, do you have any views about community groups indicating that there is a need to use compulsory purchase as part of the regeneration of town centres? Do you think that it is something you should be involved in?