Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Lord Barker of Battle and Rushanara Ali
Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)
T3. Last year the Chancellor boasted he was the first to fund a green investment bank, but that is not actually the case, because the Government are now borrowing £158 billion more than planned, and we will not have a proper green investment bank until 2016 at the earliest. How can the green investment bank be part of a growth strategy, and will the Minister provide an update on this?
The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Gregory Barker)
The hon. Lady could not be more wrong. The UK Green Investment Bank, which was introduced and created by this coalition—the Labour Government had 13 years to introduce it, but did nothing—has been going for only a matter of months but in that time it has invested £635 million and mobilised, in total, £2.3 billion. It has £3 billion of capital, which was added to in the last spending round, so billions of pounds for green investment are coming directly from this Government, using our genius for financial services. This Government are pioneering it.