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Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

I sent the permanent secretary to the Treasury a handwritten note. His conversation with me was private, and it was a private note. I can assure the hon. Gentleman on the record that no apology was sought or given or was necessary. I did not misrepresent the meeting. It was a routine meeting between Front-Bench spokesmen of both our two parties. That was all that was involved. My final point concerns the bank lending practices for which the Government have responsibility in the semi-nationalised banks. We get very excited in these debates about the Government's fiscal objectives, but these are tiny by comparison with the significance of the amount of bank lending to the corporate sector. The Government are talking about targets of roughly £90 billion of business lending. My question about this is: should we believe them? We have had these targets before. They were legally binding. They were not met. We in all parties have experiences of large numbers of small and medium-sized companies either being unable to obtain credit or being offered credit on terms that are so onerous they cannot take them up. I ask the Minister when he replies to give a much clearer explanation than he has been able to do so far about how these bank lending targets will be achieved next time when they were not achieved before.