Regional Growth Fund

Lord Howarth of Newport Excerpts

Tuesday 11th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wilcox]

If the noble Lord will wait for the Chancellor of the Exchequer to explain what he is going to do about credit easing, the noble Lord might take comfort from that. In the mean time, there is no doubt that the fund is accessible to SMEs; it is available through specific bids from organisations with experience of the SME sector that will be able to help make small grants, below £1 million, available to projects that support the fund’s objectives.

I have a couple of examples which might help. The Plymouth University and Western Morning News growth fund was announced in the summer, which targets that money directly at SMEs in the south-west of England. That will work well. Contracts have recently been finalised on the majority of engineering projects in the RGF-supported SME energy cluster in the north-east, headed by Chirton Engineering Ltd. That will be delivering 140 jobs. Although £1 million sounds too high for a small organisation, it would have been impossible to look at every one of those small applications. If anyone wishes to phone the regional growth fund, they will be helped and guided as to how they can come together with other small businesses to take this money. As your Lordships can see, we have already made available some nice amounts of funding—almost a third—to the SMEs.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My Lords, we certainly look forward to the Chancellor of the Exchequer explaining what he intends by credit easing. Would it not be the case that credit easing would tend to increase the public sector deficit to the extent that Government-backed loans to small and medium-sized enterprises underperformed? What would be the costs to SMEs in professional fees and regulatory burdens of issuing bonds? Is not the proposal to package up, securitise and sell into the marketplace loans to SMEs that banks are not otherwise willing to make all too reminiscent of the US sub-prime disaster?

[Baroness Wilcox]

I have listened carefully to what the noble Lord has said, but, as he well knows, I cannot say anything in response at the moment because the Chancellor of the Exchequer has not expounded on how he is going to bring this forward. No doubt the noble Lord will ask me a question again when the Chancellor has done so.