Lord Bilimoria
Main Page: Lord Bilimoria (Crossbench - Life peer)
Lord Marland
No, listen, please. I have visited 25 countries in the past 12 months, the Prime Minister continually takes delegations of small and medium-sized businesses with him, ambassadors are being encouraged to be outward facing, and UK Trade and Investment has had £35 million of new investment, appointing representatives throughout the world. We have done this with cross-party support. I am very grateful, for example, to the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, for the work that she does; to the noble Baroness, Lady Nicholson; to the noble Lord, Lord Risby, and to other noble Lords, across the parties, for helping to promote UK plc at this very difficult time.
Lord Bilimoria
My Lords, last month I attended a conference on entrepreneurship in Sheffield called MADE, attended by 2,500 entrepreneurs and budding entrepreneurs, which is now known as the Davos—the Glastonbury—of entrepreneurship. Of course, a major topic there was the challenges of raising finance for SMEs—the Secretary of State for Business himself spoke about this. Will the Minister tell us what the levels of financing are now compared to before, with all the government schemes that are coming in? I hear from SMEs that they are still finding it difficult to raise finance. We talk about moral hazard in bailing out the banks. Surely there is a moral hazard here, when the banks are not lending to the SMEs that can generate the growth and employment that this country desperately needs.
Lord Marland
There is no doubt that the banks are not lending to the extent to which the Government would want, and this is something that we are looking at very closely. However, we cannot castigate banks and make sure that they increase their capital and at the same time ask them to increase their lending, so I understand the problem that the banks have. I could list loads of initiatives: we are spending £1 billion in the new business bank, and we have the new enterprise allowances, which are worth £80 million. We have Smart loan schemes up to £75 million, and we are mentoring people through Mentorsme. We have the growth accelerator to which I referred earlier and the enterprise finance guarantee, through which £800 million has been awarded so far. I am actually quite grateful for this question, as noble Lords can tell, and I hope that my answer satisfies the noble Lord.