The men who handed out tax-payers' cash
Chris Blackhurst on a possible conflict of interest in South-west
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Your support makes all the difference.As a senior partner in the South-west office of KPMG, the accountancy firm, Roger Harris advises many of the region's most thrusting businesses. As chairman of the region's Industrial Development Board he assists the Department of Trade and Industry in deciding which companies in the South West should have regional selective assistance grants.
Attending development board meetings is not much of an inconvenience for Mr Harris: its offices are in the same building as KPMG's in Plymouth. Last year, the South-west development board advised on grants totalling pounds 7.4m. Six of those grants, worth pounds 2.45m, were to companies in which Mr Harris has declared an interest. In fact on 31 occasions since he became chairman of the development board in 1991, grants were awarded to companies in which he declared he had an interest.
Mr Harris is not alone. Mr Oppenheim's answer to David Jamieson, the Labour MP for Devonport discloses that former and current South West development board members, Kenneth Holmes, Michael Knight, Graham Stirling, Michael Jordan and Phil Gregory have also had to declare an interest in companies applying for grants.
One of those where Mr Harris declared an interest was Rom-Data Corporation. A Falmouth-based computer company, it applied for and was offered pounds 750,000 of regional selective assistance cash in November 1991. The application was assessed by Mr Holmes, a businessman who has served as the board's chairman. After leaving he continued to work for the board as its external adviser, and had told the board when assessing the application that he had been offered a job with Rom-Data. Soon afterwards he became company chairman.
In 1994, after receiving another pounds 250,000 of DTI cash Rom-Data collapsed, owing pounds 200,000 in wages. They, like the DTI, have never recovered their money. The Serious Fraud Office and Devon and Cornwall police are looking into the collapse Rom-Data.
The DTI is reviewing all its industrial development boards, looking at whether they have close links, like the South-west board, with the companies applying for grants and if members have been properly declaring potential conflicts of interest.
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