Covid-19: Business Interruption Loans

Lord Fox Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd April 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan]

It is important to remember that not all SMEs will want debt finance. There is a wide range of different support schemes available to businesses, including the job retention scheme and various local authority grants. We will be looking to publish, in the interests of transparency, the full range of offers that have been made to business in due course.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, I join the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, in congratulating BEIS, the Treasury and HMRC on the work that they done but, looking at the point in a different way, of those 47 accredited lenders, only the banks have the liquidity to lend at scale. Those banks are generally sticking to their current customers and, today, only six banks are offering CBILS loans to new customers. This is a really important issue. Furthermore, many are not lending below £25,000; about 90% of applications are pitched at that level and below. I was pleased that the Minister said that this was a work in progress. Can he confirm that further modifications are now under consideration and also undertake to ensure that the lack of access for new customers and the exclusion of lower-value applicants are addressed really quickly?

[Lord Callanan]

The noble Lord makes a very good point. As I have said, we have already introduced a number of technical changes to the scheme—obviously it was introduced very rapidly. We are keeping all aspects of it under review. The one that he has mentioned is important; we are looking at bringing in new lenders as soon as possible, including Funding Circle, which specialises in smaller loans for companies such as those he talks about. To answer his question: yes, we are keeping this under review, we are seeking to get new lenders accredited as quickly as possible, and we are keeping all other aspects of the scheme under review as well.