British Business Bank
Baroness Rawlings Excerpts(1 week, 1 day ago)
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Baroness Lloyd of Effra (Lab)
The British Business Bank’s new strategic mandate explicitly talks about supporting businesses in the industrial strategy priority sectors, which, as noble Lords will know, includes defence. One of the things that we will be doing is looking at where the financing gap is, whether that is for R&D intensive or deep-tech companies, and at investing behind specialist fund managers or investment strategies that specifically support particular sectors. Using its mandate, and with the increased financial capacity, the British Business Bank will be able to support our defence industry supply chain here in the UK.
Baroness Rawlings (Con)
My Lords, what are HMG doing to help the UK businesses affected by the present Gulf war?
Baroness Lloyd of Effra (Lab)
As was said earlier, we are monitoring the situation very carefully. It is unclear at present what exactly the long-term impact on energy prices and energy security will be. We are carefully looking at that. In the meantime, we have taken measures, including through the British energy-intensive industries scheme, to support energy prices for the most intensive users here in the UK.
Medical Product Liability
Baroness Rawlings Excerpts(1 year, 5 months ago)
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Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
I bow to the noble Lord’s greater knowledge of this issue. My understanding is that any changes we want to make will require primary legislation, and that claims under the current legislation cannot be made more than 10 years after the product which caused the damage was supplied. There may be exceptions to that and perhaps the noble Lord and I could discuss that outside.
Baroness Rawlings (Con)
My Lords, does this cover generic medicines too?
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
The product liability legislation covers all types of products, not just medical products, so I am sure generic medicines will be covered by it as well.