Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Rachel Reeves and Nick Clegg

Tuesday 24th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

We want to reduce the number of people in the reformed House of Lords very dramatically—the draft Bill and White Paper that we published last week suggests 300 Members. Exactly what the cost will be depends, of course, on the proportions of elected and non-elected Members, so it is quite difficult to come up with precise estimates at this stage.

[Rachel Reeves (Leeds West) (Lab)]

Good businesses in all our constituencies are being denied bank lending, and new data show that bank lending to small businesses is £2 billion short of the Government’s targets. When will the Government show some backbone and take robust action on the banks?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

That comes from a party that let the banks run completely amok, and a party that landed us with that problem in the first place! However, I totally agree with the hon. Lady on the Merlin agreement, which the Government have signed with the banks—it commits the banks to lending targets to businesses generally, and to small and medium-sized enterprises specifically. The agreement is in its very early days, but we have made it unambiguously clear to the banks that they must honour its terms. If they fail to do so, we will not be bound by our side of it either.