Adrian Bailey
Main Page: Adrian Bailey (Labour (Co-op) - West Bromwich West)Department Debates - View all Adrian Bailey's debates with the Department for Education
(10 years, 11 months ago)
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Vince Cable
The hon. Gentleman is right that the building societies have a crucial role, primarily of course in mortgage lending, which is their traditional business, but some of them are moving into small business lending and that is very welcome. One of the reasons why the Chancellor and I did not support the recommendations of the parliamentary commission on leverage ratios was to protect building societies and enable them to expand.
Mr Adrian Bailey (West Bromwich West) (Lab/Co-op)
Given the failure of successive well-intentioned but ineffective Government schemes to boost lending for small businesses, including £78 million of unallocated resources for the funding for lending scheme, will the Secretary of State outline what extra measures he will take to ensure that the business bank succeeds where other schemes have failed?
Vince Cable
The bank is already succeeding. As I said to the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms), there has been a very big increase in the lending being made available under the existing schemes and a big growth in equity-related activity. I think he will find that, as the business bank moves forward, we will use the £1.25 billion of new capital from the Treasury to do exactly what it was designed to achieve. I am very positive about the bank’s future.