Railways: High Speed 2 Review
Debate between Lord Popat and Baroness Wheatcroft
Lord Popat
I take the point that the noble Lord has made. I will ask the department to make sure that something is placed in the Library from the public records.
Baroness Wheatcroft (Con)
My Lords, might this be a more popular project if we stopped referring to HS2 and referred to North-South 2?
Lord Popat
My Lords, we have HS1 and this is HS2. It is in a “Y” shape, so it will go to both the east and the west from the south.
Banks: Small and Medium-sized Enterprises
Debate between Lord Popat and Baroness Wheatcroft
Lord Popat
My Lords, gross lending has gone up by 16% over the past 12 months. We intend to lend £4 billion per month compared with around £3.1 billion this time last year. We encourage peer-to-peer lending and more is happening in the area. One of the reasons that net lending might have dropped, which is probably the gist of the noble Lord’s question, is that a large number of businesses are either repaying or going for alternative financing, including factoring, leasing and hire purchase. There are also a number of schemes from the British Business Bank.
Baroness Wheatcroft (Con)
My Lords, debt is not always the safest way for small firms to finance their expansion. Does my noble friend agree that encouraging smaller firms to look at equity financing may be the sensible way forward?
Start-up Loans
Debate between Lord Popat and Baroness Wheatcroft
Lord Popat
My Lords, it is not under the Government’s control to insist that banks have branch networks or branch managers at branches throughout the country. However, given time, with competition being put in place, this will happen—they will have no choice. If they really want to lend money and understand the local business and local businessmen, they will have to have a local branch network. On interest-free loans, I do not have information in my briefing but I will be very happy to write to the noble Lord on where that money comes from and how someone is able to give interest-free loans. Perhaps the people who sold those goods to the noble Lord are offering the loan themselves from the profit they made from the goods that were sold. However, I will certainly write to the noble Lord.
Baroness Wheatcroft (Con)
My Lords, I applaud these steps that are being taken to encourage new businesses. I hope that some of them might go into making kitchens so that the noble Lord opposite might be able to buy British in the future. However, other noble Lords have remarked that it is important that companies should have access to advice as well as to money. Does the Minister agree that the Government inherited so many different advice schemes that the forest is impenetrable and that no entrepreneur has time to wade through it? Surely the sensible thing to do is what I believe the Minister is doing, which is first of all to simplify the advice schemes that are available.
Lord Popat
I thank the noble Baroness for her question. Yes, we inherited a large number of different schemes and advice schemes from the previous Government. We have looked at them and have come up with new ones as well. However, these schemes are all being consolidated under the new British Business Bank. I hope that it will be able to deliver good advice to its customers.