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The Economy

I will not, as we are all constrained by the time limit. It is important to recognise that we start from a low base of business investment. Even in these tough times, businesses have to think about where, if they can get capital, they place that capital to ensure that they are best positioned for recovery, so that they do not find themselves disadvantaged by the recession, which has largely had nothing to do with their good business activities and everything to do with another part of the economy. In addition to all that others have said, I suggest that there is an opportunity for the Government to—let us call it this—steal our policies, including the £50 billion national loan guarantee scheme. Despite the various attempts by various Whips and others to rubbish that, nothing has been proved against it. We have also proposed a tax break for new jobs, making sure that we reduce employment costs for small businesses by cutting national insurance, and helping small business with their cash flow by delaying VAT bills for six months. Through the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform we need to tackle the credit insurance calamity, which is causing major problems of supply. The Government are not prepared to acknowledge that and Lord Mandelson is apparently unwilling to meet leading retailers to discuss it. Another point, which I hope I will be able to discuss later with my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Front Bench, is that we should look seriously to the past when the Industrial and Commercial Finance Corporation, which was succeeded by 3i, was an extremely good way of trying to get a balance between equity and debt risk into new and start-up companies and early development companies. That was a success story, and I do not think that the conditions today are dramatically different, so we should look to those lessons. But perhaps, rather than being owned by the Bank of England and the clearers, such an entity might be very interesting to the venture capital trusts that are looking for opportunities to get their money to work. I have to report an insidious and worrying effect of the Government’s increasing involvement in the everyday aspects of our lives. As some may have read in the press, my constituent , Geoff Robbins, who has a thoroughly sound business, rang up his bank, RBS, for a normal merchant account, and after the usual questions, the final one was whether he had any political or judicial affiliations. Can you believe it? A well-known journalist tested that and received exactly the same reply and the bank was embarrassed and had to backtrack. That is a sign of the times. When banks start to become state-owned, people begin to worry that unless they are something to do with Labour they will be disadvantaged. That is a deeply worrying development in our national life. One has only to pose the question in the future: Labour or Conservative, which is safer? The answer is Conservative.