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Finance Bill

The hon. Gentleman has just moved on to the point that I wished to make, which is that the assumptions are based on optimistic forecasts about future growth, which no one believes. Following on from what the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) said, when someone running a small business is in difficulty and goes to the bank, the single most important thing that they have to do to ensure that the bank will continue to lend to them is to give realistic forecasts. The bank will lend even with quite bleak forecasts, but it will not continue to lend to someone who has given forecasts that turn out to be completely and utterly wrong, because that undermines the confidence of those doing the lending.