Autumn Statement
Debate between Lord Elliott of Ballinamallard and Lord Hammond of Runnymede(8 years ago)
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Mr Hammond
I have announced today that the UK loan guarantee scheme will be extended until at least 2016. It has a very significant amount of headroom; I think the cap on it at the moment is £40 billion, and we are nowhere near using up that capacity. The important thing about the UK loan guarantee scheme is that it underpins projects at an early stage. Many projects have gone ahead without loan guarantees, but because they had a commitment on the loan guarantee they were able to proceed and then eventually were able to get funding without it. It is playing a very important role that is understated by the measure of guarantees actually issued.
Tom Elliott (Fermanagh and South Tyrone) (UUP)
On the shale wealth fund, is the £1 billion totally Treasury money or is some of it coming from the companies that will be developing the shale gas project?
Libya
Debate between Lord Elliott of Ballinamallard and Lord Hammond of Runnymede(8 years, 7 months ago)
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Mr Hammond
The statement that my right hon. Friend the Defence Secretary made yesterday clarified that point. Where troops or personnel are embedded in the military forces of other nations, they are treated as being part of those forces for operational purposes; they are not covered by the commitment we have made to come back to the House. It would be absurd if a British pilot embedded in the US navy, for example, maintaining our carrier base skills ahead of the commissioning of our own carriers in 2018, had to be the subject of a debate in the House of Commons because of some decision taken by the US Government.
Tom Elliott (Fermanagh and South Tyrone) (UUP)
In answer to a question last week, the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, the hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood), said that the Government would facilitate a visit of UK victims of terrorism that involved Semtex to Libya in the near future. Now that the Foreign Secretary has gone there, is there any timescale for when we can expect such a visit?
Mr Hammond
I do not think that the conditions would be right for such a visit right now, and I cannot see exactly what the point would be at this stage. Once the Government of national accord are established in their Ministries, with access to their records and their competent civil servants, and once our ambassador is back in Tripoli, I will certainly be prepared to see what we can do to facilitate such a visit.