Covid-19: Small Businesses

Lord Bird Excerpts

Thursday 29th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

My noble friend makes an important point, and I hope that councils, in particular, being part of the public sector, will be sympathetic to the plight of many small businesses at this time. I am sure that my noble friend will understand, however, that I cannot predict what the Chancellor might have to say, on VAT or any other matters, in his future Budgets.

[Lord Bird (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as set out in the register. I am the recipient of a very generous bounce-back loan: thank you very much indeed. It is very useful for a social business in difficult times, and I would like to see more of that coming down the line. But what concerns me is that the only way to help small businessmen is to get control of Covid—and what alarms me, and a lot of people in the country, is that there does not seem to be unity in Parliament. Is it too early or too late—or too wrong—to call for some kind of national Government to bring us together, so that we can dismantle the biggest crisis we have ever faced in the history of our country?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I am pleased that the noble Lord has been able to take advantage of one of our loan schemes. He made an interesting suggestion about a national Government—but I hope he will accept that that is way above my pay grade.