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The ability to mastermind its own State aid regime was put forward as one of the best opportunities for the UK post-Brexit, and with good reason.\u00a0 Cleverly targeted State subsidies can dramatically improve economies and provided due care is taken this should not fracture a strikingly pro-competitive free market.\u00a0 At the same time wasteful subsidies make poor use of scarce public resource, can undermine the functioning of markets and breach the UK’s international agreements.\u00a0 With a Parliamentary majority of 80, the Subsidy Control Bill is almost certain to pass quickly through Parliament, but it is sufficiently important to the prospects of the UK to merit careful scrutiny. \u00a0 Ultimately the new Subsidy Control regime must strike a difficult balance: it needs to take full advantage of new opportunities, whilst not opening the floodgates to wasteful and damaging subsidies.\u00a0 For many decades, the UK has prided itself on being fiercely pro-competition and non-interventionist.\u00a0 Although public spending has increased, the high standards that the UK has developed around managing public money should not be diluted. Ultimately the new regime must only allow subsidy to be awarded where there is a clear and demonstrable rationale for intervention, but should also contain sufficient checks and balances to ensure public funding is always applied proportionately. \u00a0 \u00a0
Jonathan Branton and Alexander Rose, DWF \u00a0<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Note: this article by Jonathan and Alex is particularly timely as the Subsidy Control Bill is getting its Second Reading in the House of Commons today (22 September). The Subsidy Control Bill will have its second reading in Parliament … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,15,25],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uksala.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1325"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uksala.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uksala.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uksala.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uksala.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1325"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/uksala.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1325\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uksala.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uksala.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uksala.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}