MPs criticise privatisation of Belfast Airport

The privatisation of Belfast International Airport four years ago has been described as "outrageous" by a House of Commons Select Committee report. The report from the Select Committee on Public Accounts said the sale of the airport to a management/employee-led consortium in 1994 for £32.75 million was handled poorly.

This consortium ended up selling the airport two years later to the TBI group for almost £107 million. This represented an increase of more than £74 million on the amount the Government received when it sold the airport to the first consortium.

The committee's report does not accept explanations from officials in the Department of the Environment, which handled the sale, that improvements in the political climate explain the large difference in the two sale prices.

One MP on the committee said the deal "stinks from start to finish". The MPs on the committee say that had a 20 per cent "clawback" mechanism been in place, £12 million would have come to taxpayers after the second sale was completed.

"We find it outrageous the purchasers of the airport should have been able to acquire an asset belonging to the taxpayer and sell it at such an immense profit in just two years without any obligation to return some of that profit to the taxpayer," the report states.

Speaking to The Irish Times yesterday, the current Northern Ireland Environment Minister, Lord Dubs, described the way the privatisation process was handled as a "scandal". He added that, since he took office, the Department of the Environment had put several "checks in place" to ensure other privatisations would not take place in the same manner.

At present, there are proposals to sell Belfast Harbour and several other State companies could be facing privatisation in the future.

Many of the criticisms in the report are directed at Department of the Environment officials. "It is clear that neither the Department of the Environment nor its advisers had a sufficient appreciation of the value of the business opportunity in this sale," it says.

It also rejects the contention at the time by the department that a "clawback" would have deterred potential bidders. "We are not satisfied that the arguments for and against a clawback clause were adequately weighed up by the Department and its advisers at the time," it says.

The report also notes "the extremely high level of capital investment in the airport in the five-year period leading up to the sale". "It is not clear from the evidence presented to us that this increased the value of the business."

The report says that, while the department quoted Treasury guidelines as one of the main reasons for not having a clawback, it did not seem to give the same weight to Treasury guidance on capital expenditure controls.

Lord Dubs said the sale was driven by "haste and ideology" and it is understandable that taxpayers were unhappy with the results.