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Economic Growth and Employment

My experience of the Work programme is that it is a not-working programme. The cut in VAT to 5% for home improvement repairs and maintenance—another part of Labour's five-point plan—would discourage the black market and encourage investment in our housing stock at a time when the Government are wringing their hands about the green deal. Experian data show that a cut from 17.5% to 5% would have produced a £1.4 billion stimulus to the UK economy in 2010, which would have got Britain building. It is working on reviewing that figure in the light of the current 20% VAT rate. On housing, which is an important part of the construction industry, social rent starts and affordable home starts have fallen by 99%, but in 2007, there were 357,000 first-time home buyers in the UK, who generated £2.1 billion in our high streets. That is the real power of the construction industry and why the industry is so important to the whole of the UK. I hope the Government plans announced earlier this week to regenerate the housing market deliver progress, but one must ask: why have they been asleep at the wheel for the past 18 months? On lending, we are a country of small businesses, yet the Federation of Small Businesses tells us that credit lines for financially sound businesses have been tightened and interest rates have increased. The Federation of Master Builders has reinforced the point about that failure. The Government have announced a desire to look at credit easing, which suggests that Project Merlin has failed. Do they know how much of Project Merlin's compliance agreements are re-signed and recycled arrangements? Do they know that banks are withdrawing overdraft facilities and setting businesses up with term loans?