62. Last year, I highlighted a worrying concern that some taxpayers' assets are being seen by Government as easy opportunities to make a quick return at the expense of lost future income and, critically, loss of control of a publicly-owned asset.
63. Current Government policy stipulates an automatic preference for selling off a public asset unless there is a policy reason not to. This creates a default assumption in favour of selling assets, carefully built up over the years on behalf of the taxpayer, only through a short-term monetary lens at the expense of longer-term strategic considerations. It can also create a self-defeating pressure for Government to hastily sell at any price.
64. We raised these concerns as part of our inquiry into the Government sale of the first tranche of student loans in 2017. The Government secured a return for the taxpayer of only 48p in the £1 on loans with a face value of £3.5 billion.82 Whilst we did not expect the Government to fully recover the face value, with the Government's own analysis projecting the £1.7 billion sale price being recouped in only eight years, we questioned whether taxpayer value-for-money had truly been secured. There is a risk that the Government's inclination to run a never-ending auction of the taxpayer's silver left it vulnerable to accepting bargain basement prices and the taxpayer ultimately lost out. We will continue keeping a watchful eye to make sure that as these sales continue, the taxpayer is not left short-changed.
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82 Committee of Public Accounts, Sale of Student Loans, Sixty-Ninth Report of Session 2017-19, HC 1527, 22 November 2018, p 3