§ Mr. AllenTo ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will list the individual amounts of debt repayments written off in each of the privatisations and sale of Government assets since 1979 and the aggregate of these write-offs.
§ Mr. Norman LamontThe normal practice on privatisation of a nationalised industry or company wholly or majority owned by Government is to repay, rather than write off, debt. This repayment may be financed from the company's existing resources, the injection of new equity or new debt finance. In some cases the Government have provided the finance to repay debts, for example, by an equity injection.
National loans fund debt has been written off only in the cases listed in the table, totalling £3,014,662,728. These write-offs had no direct effect on public expenditure since they represented a reconstruction of the balance sheets of the industries concerned. In each case, having had NLF debt written off, the successor company issued new equity or debt securities to be held by the Secretary of State as assets on the consolidated fund pending realisation.
270W
Year and Company Amount £ 1980–81 National Freight Corporation (under Section 45 of the Transport Act 1980) 100,000,000 1982–83 British Transport Docks Board (under Section 6(1) of the Transport Act 1981) 81,293,616
Year and Company Amount £ 1984–85 British Telecom (BT Extinguishment of Loans Order 1982) 2,789,865,772 1986–87 BAA (under section 3 of the Airports Act 1986) 43,503,340