State Aid: Brexit, Bailouts and Corporate Bonanzas

Analysis

BBC

News, Politics

4.6 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 28 October 2019

⏱️ 30 minutes

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Summary

When the steelworks at Redcar went bust in 2015 the government said it couldn’t bail out the company that ran the plant because of the EU’s state aid rules, which regulate how much money the government can give to businesses and industry. 1700 jobs were lost in the North East of England, which has the highest unemployment rate in the UK. Voices on the left and right say the state aid rules are holding Britain back from supporting its industry. Are they right? Does Brexit give Britain the chance to take back control of how it manages its industrial policy? Or do the state aid rules protect taxpayers from governments handing out large subsidies to big corporations? In this edition of Analysis, James Ball, global editor of the Bureau for Investigative Journalism, explores the EU’s state aid rules, how they affect our livelihoods, and what might happen if the UK decides to stop playing by the rules after Brexit.

Producer: Xavier Zapata Editor: Jasper Corbett

Interviewees: Brian Dennis, former Labour Councillor Mariana Mazzucato , Professor of Innovation and Public Value at University College London, author of the Entrepreneurial State and Founding Director of the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose Usha Haley, the W. Frank Barton Distinguished Chair in International Business at Wichita State University Nicole Robins, head of the state aid unit at Oxera Corri Hess , reporter for Wisconsin Public Radio Kenneth Thomas, Emeritus Professor of Political Science at The University of Missouri, St Louis George Peretz QC, Barrister at Monckton Chambers and co-chair of the UK State Aid Law Association Nicholas Crafts, Professor of Economic Historian at Sussex University

Transcript

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0:41.0	Hello, thanks for downloading this edition of Analysis, the Po- podcasts. producer of this edition. Over the next half hour James Ball will be looking at the
0:54.5	European Union's state aid rules which restrict the amount of money the government
0:59.6	can give to support businesses and industries.
1:03.0	Might Brexit give us a chance to play by our own rules?
1:07.0	I have a spaniel dog and I go walk along the beach
1:11.0	and when you walk along the beach it's sat there towering above
1:16.4	rusting away devolicked and that breaks my heart.
1:28.9	This is Brian Dennis, talking about the former Steelworks in Redcar, which shut down when its parent company SSI UK went bust in 2015. Brian who had worked in the plant for decades was one of
1:38.6	1700 people who lost their jobs.
1:43.1	The company had racked up big debts and was struggling to compete in a global market flooded
1:48.6	with cheap steel exported by China.
1:59.7	SSI asked David Cameron's government for a hundred million pound bailout for Redcar's steelworks, but was told it couldn't help, primarily because of the European Union state aid rules,
2:05.2	which regulate how much money the government can give to support businesses and industries.
	...

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