Financial Services: Competition

Baroness Kramer Excerpts

Thursday 22nd October 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

My Lords, to support the development of diverse finance markets for smaller businesses, the Government have established the British Business Bank, which brings together new and existing schemes into a single, commercially minded institution. The Chancellor also announced the launch of the Business Banking Insight survey. This will help the UK’s SMEs to understand their options, make decisions about who they should bank with and plan how they will finance their growth. Lastly, the Federation of Small Businesses survey found that more SMEs reported that credit was affordable and available than at any time since 2012.

[Baroness Kramer (LD)]

My Lords, the phenomenal and brilliant success of peer-to-peer lending is a vindication of this House, which in 2012 effectively strong-armed the Treasury into recognising that the industry both wanted and needed regulation in order to grow. Now, with UK-based peer-to-peers expanding across the European Union and new peer-to-peers springing up there, will the Government commit to work with Governments of other EU countries and the Commission to avoid what is turning into regulatory chaos, so that this is a single market from the beginning?

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

My Lords, the Government are certainly anxious to have a proper regulatory system and will of course do whatever they can to make sure that we do not have regulatory chaos.