Amendment of the Law

Debate between Lord Foster of Bath and Vince Cable

Thursday 24th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Vince Cable]

It is new money and of course this has to be employer-led; otherwise, there would be no job to follow the apprenticeship. That is why it has got to come from the private sector and why this is the best way of investing in training.

In my concluding comments, I wish to move on to the issue of fairness. It is a legitimate challenge to any Budget to ask about its distributional impact.

[Mr Don Foster (Bath) (LD)]

I confess that I am about to be disappointed here. In 46 minutes, we heard hardly any news from the shadow Chancellor about what a Labour Government would do. My right hon. Friend is about to disappoint me by not even mentioning some of the other fantastic things he has done for businesses, such as the research and development tax credit, the entrepreneurs’ relief, the increased bank lending, the developments in the enterprise investment scheme and so on. Why is he not referring to these many other good things?

[Vince Cable]

I probably was going to disappoint my right hon. Friend, because the Chancellor covered those issues very well yesterday. However, there is a lot more where that came from.

Local Growth White Paper

Debate between Lord Foster of Bath and Vince Cable

Thursday 28th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Vince Cable]

We have discussed this extensively in the House and in the Select Committee, and we have explained that the situation we were confronted with was that that project was not affordable. If new projects come up from there or elsewhere, they can be considered by the regional growth fund on their merits.

[Mr Don Foster (Bath) (LD)]

May I thank the Secretary of State for allowing the west of England LEP to go ahead and advise him to educate the shadow Secretary of State on what those initials stand for? On the issue of the creative industries, does he agree that the creative industries could be one of the key drivers for growth in this country? Will he therefore assure us that the transformation of Business Link and the planned technology and innovation centres will be specifically directed to help them?

[Vince Cable]

My colleague is absolutely right that the contribution of the creative industries sector has been consistently ignored in the past. In terms of employment and value-added, it has at least as much growth as the financial services sector. I propose to work with my colleague in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to bring the industry together to see what we can do to overcome the obstacles to its growth.