Anas Sarwar
Main Page: Anas Sarwar (Labour - Glasgow Central)Department Debates - View all Anas Sarwar's debates with the HM Treasury
(11 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Osborne
Small business rate relief has helped many small firms to cope with the cost of rates, and we have been able to extend it year after year. We will have to make a decision later in this Parliament about a further extension, but there is clear evidence that the current extension is doing a great deal of good.
Anas Sarwar (Glasgow Central) (Lab)
The main complaint from businesses throughout the country, both small and large, is that they do not feel they are receiving the support that they need from the banking sector. Given that state-owned banks are among the poorest in terms of lending, what is Jeffrey—sorry, the Chancellor of the Exchequer—doing about it?
Mr Osborne
As I said earlier, the Royal Bank of Scotland is the largest lender to small businesses in our country. That is why it is such an important support for the economy. We are taking a serious look at how we can enable it to move on from all the bad loans—all the bad bets that it laid—during the middle years of the last decade, when, by the way, the shadow Chancellor, who is still muttering from a sedentary position, was City Minister.
Surely it is in all our interests to try to sort out the banking problem, but I have no idea whether Labour Members support our proposal on the Royal Bank of Scotland. We have heard absolutely nothing from them. However, what we are doing shows that we are actually confronting the problems that we inherited.