Lord Mitchell
Main Page: Lord Mitchell (Labour - Life peer)
Lord Marland
Obviously I shall discuss that with my friends in local government. It is not something for me to deal with, but it is something that the Government will look at as part of the Portas review. I take on board what my noble friend has said.
Lord Mitchell
My Lords, last week the Government announced a new partnership to help SMEs. It is hard to credit it, but their partner of choice is Barclays Bank, the number one casino bank. The Minister listed a whole load of programmes which the Government have announced, and indeed they have, but the fact is that very little of it is getting through to the SMEs themselves. When are this Government going to make sure that these programmes are much more effective?
Lord Marland
First, I welcome the noble Lord to the Front Bench. It is a pleasure to see him. I was looking up his great achievements earlier and, in addition to business and technology, I noticed that one of the things that interested him was alcohol abuse. Following what I did last night, I am thinking of putting that down as one of my interests. He raised a greater point—what the Government are doing. We are trying to make the weather and to create activity. That activity is working, which is why I was able to say that 450,000 new businesses have started in the past 12 months, the most since records were kept.