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Small Businesses

My Lords, first I say to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, that I would not have wanted to cause any offence to him or to this House by making the Statement when I have. As I have a particular interest in the survival of small and medium-sized Secretaries of State, I do not want to fall foul of your Lordships so early on in my career. I realise that the importance of the issue concerns the whole House and it is important that I should report personally to your Lordships. I am doing so as soon as the Business of the House allows. However, he was right to point out that it is not always easy to synchronise the timetables of business in this House and in the other House. He is right, too, in pointing out that yesterday was a day of government activity concerning small and medium-sized enterprises. I plead guilty to all the charges except the one regarding the ““Today”” programme. Out of respect to the Select Committee before which I was appearing I skipped that so that I could toil instead of spin. On the noble Lord’s individual questions, I think that the £350 million that we have announced for training indicates that SMEs have risen up the Government’s priority list and agenda and of our training agencies. They are now the top priority. He asked specifically about the availability of lending to SMEs. We need to be clear: availability is not a requirement to lend at 2007 volume levels. We cannot and should not, first of all, pre-empt the banks’ judgment. We cannot anticipate what demand there will be. All we are saying is that, as a condition for our stake in the recapitalisation, we are asking the banks to make available the resources at 2007 levels and to offer a wide range of products at competitive rates to be made available to the customers they judge to be creditworthy. We are not pre-empting or second-guessing the banks but asking them to maintain the availability of funds for lending to SMEs and to publicise this availability to SMEs. I am grateful for what I think was the noble Lord’s support for the Government’s action on prompt payment. I refer to the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Cotter, on this as well. We were very quick to give a lead. I hope that it is not only the rest of the public sector that follows the lead of central government departments in adopting a 10-day payment period. Obviously we have to be mindful of our responsibility to taxpayers—invoices have to be properly prepared; we are not skipping stages—but we think that it is very important that, as far as possible, this 10-day payment period is respected not only by central government departments but across the public sector. On the noble Lord’s questions on tax changes, I think that any answer by me concerning VAT, national insurance or corporation tax would be a career-shortening move; so I shall leave any matters to do with taxation to my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer. In response to the noble Lord’s question on the EIB, we have now received an indication that the EIB is prepared to commit to that additional funding. I look forward to further discussions taking place in the coming weeks so that that can be nailed down. I have two last points to make, in response to the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Cotter. Business Link, and the services that it provides, is very important. It is well resourced by central government—and I shall satisfy myself that it is receiving all the resources that it needs in the coming economic climate to discharge its functions. On apprenticeships and skills, when I was on my away-day yesterday, in Sittingbourne in Kent, with the Prime Minister, I was very struck by the SME employers and managers who said that they wanted flexibility in training modules. They did not want the whole works; they wanted bite-sized chunks of training that relate specifically to their needs in the businesses in which they are active. Our job is to ensure that we have sufficient flexibility and responsiveness to make those bite-sized chunks available to those who want to take them up.