Business of the House

Neil Carmichael Excerpts

Thursday 20th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

The youth service is an important service provided by county councils, and it is up to them to decide which of the resources that have been made available to them to put into it. Of course Ministers will be happy to respond to a lobby, but decisions on resource priorities are made by locally elected authorities.

[Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)]

In my constituency we have a lot of manufacturing and engineering to celebrate, especially in the small and medium enterprise sector, but there would be more if we could just encourage banks to lend a little more to those firms. May we have some assurance that the credit easing that we are about to have really will reach those firms in a meaningful way?

[Sir George Young]

My hon. Friend is right. Ever since the 1930s we have had the so-called Macmillan gap, which is the absence of secure capital funding for small and medium-sized enterprises. Other countries, such as the US, have bonds that are available to small companies. Credit easing, more details of which will be available in the autumn statement, has as its objective not just helping SMEs to provide growth and employment but creating a new market in capital for them by possibly generating a new market in bonds.