Covid-19: Furloughed Space Grant Scheme

Baroness Wheatcroft Excerpts

Monday 15th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Penn]

The noble Lord is right: some businesses have had trouble accessing the initial loan support schemes. One thing that the Government have done to change this was the introduction of the bounce-back loan scheme, which has significantly increased the speed of approvals for those businesses that qualify. We are also doing other things to help with cash flow that do not rely on such approvals. As I said, 99% of eligible businesses that are also eligible for a rates holiday have already been granted that and we have released £10 billion of cash grants to them as well.

[Baroness Wheatcroft (Non-Afl) [V]]

My Lords, many of the landlords of the retail properties now in need of the sort of help being discussed are local authorities. They are allowed to borrow money from the Government to invest in commercial property to the tune of £6.6 billion. This was always going to end in disaster, so will the Minister give an assurance that in future, the Government will lend to local authorities only to invest in social housing, not in ill-judged ventures into commercial property?