G20

Guy Opperman Excerpts

Monday 9th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I am grateful for the hon. Lady’s question. In some cases it is money—we have put in money for humanitarian aid to Lebanon, Jordan, and some limited resources to Turkey. As I said, however, it has also been about directly providing the Jordanians with specific pieces of equipment they have asked for. We have helped the Lebanese army, given quite a lot of advice, and we stand ready to help as we can. In the long term, it is untenable for countries such as Lebanon to see an increase of, effectively, a quarter in their population. We need a solution to the crisis so that people can go home.

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

On the economy, the Prime Minister spoke of repairing our broken banking system. Does he agree that the creation and expansion of regional and local banks are key reforms of this Government that will provide finance for small and medium-sized enterprises, address payday lending problems, and reinvigorate local community banking?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. As well as looking at the big banks and how we nurse them back to health—some good progress has been made there—we also need to encourage what are called “challenger” banks, and new lenders into the British economy. Those can be crowdsource funders as well as new start-up banks, or businesses such as supermarkets that are getting into banking. We should be encouraging all those things for a more competitive sector.