Amendment of the Law

Geraint Davies Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Redwood]

Of course I welcome that. One of the big barriers to entry and to more effective competition for the large companies in Britain is the weight of regulation, which hits anyone who tries to start up a new business. I have done it in the past and I know what it feels like. One has to raise a lot more extra money because for six months to a year one is just trying to comply in many areas before one can trade. Yes, of course we want sensible regulation. We do not believe in an unregulated world. We believe in the law of contract. We believe that people should have a duty of care towards their staff and their customers, but if there are too many and too detailed competing types of prescriptive regulation, it puts people off and they say, “It’s too expensive. I can’t be bothered.”

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

But does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the issue for small business today is not so much regulation as liquidity and lending to SMEs by the banks? A constituent of mine, Alun Richards, is on hunger strike. He had a business with net assets and a limited amount of debt, and Lloyds bank came along and withdrew the debt. Now he is going bankrupt because he has no working capital. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that that is disgraceful, particularly from a bank that is owned by the taxpayer? Poor old Alun Richards wants to run his business, not to be undermined by the banks. What are the Government doing about that?

[Mr Redwood]

Of course I agree that if there is a solvent and enterprising business and it is not getting proper banking facilities, that is very bad indeed. It is particularly bad if it is a state-owned or state-influenced bank that is responsible.

My final points are about banking, as time presses and many others want to speak. Of equal importance to the weighty matters covered by the Chancellor today will be the Vickers report and the Government’s response to it. I believe that we will have interim conclusions from Sir John Vickers on 11 April. We are not going to have fast, sustained, above-average growth in this country unless we sort out the banks a little more than we have done so far. All colleagues in the House are united in having individual cases where they feel a company could have been saved or could have grown more rapidly if only there had been more sympathetic or understanding bank managers and facilities. There is a problem with British banking serving the SME sector town by town, county by county. There is a lot of talent in the banks, concentrated at the national level and in the big national accounts. Many hon. Members like to knock those people, but they made an important contribution to the growth rate under the previous Government and to our economy.

[Mr Redwood]

I certainly hope that when we see the Vickers report and have a proper debate on it we will be able to find sensible ways of promoting much more competition in the domestic banking market. We need more competition on the high street for individuals and families and more competition in town centres for SMEs, which in previous generations probably had better and more direct relationships with local bank managers, who had a bit more authority to grant loans and make money available on judgment than is currently the case through the box-ticking, centralised computer systems.

[Geraint Davies]

In that case, and given the last intervention, does the right hon. Gentleman agree that perhaps the Budget should have introduced tax relief or tax credits for individuals wanting to invest in SMEs, because venture capitalists want too high a return and the banks are failing the small business sector? We want an inclusive economy. Surely there should have been some support for SMEs so that we could all invest in small businesses more effectively.

[Mr Redwood]

That is exactly what the Budget contained. I think there was a revamped and revised enterprise investment scheme and an improvement in the capital gains treatment for successful entrepreneurs. It is always nice for new people setting up small businesses to be able to dream, and why should those of them who are successful not keep the proceeds if they have created jobs and done so much?

The outcome of the Budget will depend on two important considerations: whether we can put enough measures in place along the lines that the Chancellor has laid out for promoting growth; and whether there is a happy and sensible resolution to the banking problems as they affect SMEs and the wider public in Britain. There has been much discussion of the big banks, the investment banks and all those sorts of issues, but we now need to laser in on how the banks serve local communities and the SME sector. We need a more pro-competitive answer. I have some thoughts on how we could do that, but will not detain the House with them because today is not the day for that. However, without such measures the Budget will find it difficult to deliver the very large figures for increased revenue on which the whole plan rests.