§ Mr. BellinghamTo ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what estimate her Department has made of the amount of waste in the Government industrial grants system since 1997, in terms of(a) jobs created that would have been created anyway and (b) investment attracted to the UK that would have been made anyway; and if she will make a statement. [121902]
§ Jacqui SmithThe most recent evaluation of the cost-effectiveness of offers accepted under the regional selective assistance scheme was published in 2000 on offers made in the period 1991–95. This found that the net cost per net job was of a similar order of magnitude to the estimates produced using a similar methodology in previous evaluations. These evaluations took into account estimates of jobs and investment that would have been created, safeguarded and made anyway.
74WRegional selective assistance was refocused in 2000 more on high quality, knowledge-based projects providing skilled jobs. There has not been time since the new policy was implemented for a sufficient number of projects to have been completed to make a new evaluation valuable.