Industrial Strategy

Lord Cryer Excerpts

Monday 10th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Vince Cable]

I am certainly very happy to meet the group. A key part of the industrial strategy relates to manufacturing. However, it is important to stress that the modern economy is much more complex than the old sub-divisions. Much of the value in manufacturing these days derives from what are called intangibles—intellectual property, for example, and IT work. The services sector in its modern form contributes massively to our economy, which is why one of the areas we want to focus on is services that can be sold overseas and that have a large knowledge or technology component.

[John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)]

Following on from a previous question, SMEs regularly tell me that they find it difficult to access funding from the big banks, and in some cases the banks are actually obstructive. The question therefore arises: where will the industrial strategy succeed, where the Merlin agreement apparently failed?

[Vince Cable]

The Merlin agreement did not fail. It was not sufficient, but it did have the effect of stabilising lending to SMEs by banks above the level it would otherwise have reached. I am often critical of the banks, but to be fair to them, a major factor is the change in the system of regulation—much of it taking place internationally—which is forcing the banks to hold more capital and to weight their risks in a different way. That has the effect of discouraging lending to SMEs. We are proceeding with a whole lot of interventions that are designed to counter that trend.