Owen Smith
Main Page: Owen Smith (Labour - Pontypridd)Department Debates - View all Owen Smith's debates with the HM Treasury
(12 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Hoban
We are working with banks on the details behind the national loan guarantee scheme. We have set aside £20 billion to enable the rates that are charged to small businesses to fall by up to 1%. The utilisation of the scheme will very much be driven by the demand from businesses for debt finance.
Owen Smith (Pontypridd) (Lab)
Yesterday the Chief Secretary appeared not to know too much about what the Work programme was going to do to deal with unemployment. This morning, the National Audit Office tells us that the programme will fail to get a third of the people the Government are targeting back into work. Can Ministers now tell us how much extra this latest failure to tackle unemployment will cost the Exchequer?
Mr Hoban
The NAO’s report this morning was based on guesswork. The scheme has not been fully implemented and there are no published figures as yet on the out-turn for the scheme. Let me just say that private sector providers expect that this scheme will be more effective than the schemes put in place by previous Governments.