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Finance (No. 4) Bill

I certainly applaud measures to give young people the opportunity to take out loans to start up businesses, but even people with immense experience are finding it incredibly difficult to do that. There is just not the right climate at the moment to start a business. I would like to see more stimulus for the economy so that people who want to establish start-ups have a viable chance of making a success of them. At the moment, it is terribly difficult for anybody to sell anything to anyone or to persuade anyone to part with their money, which is the essence of getting a business going. In Wales, we are trying to create jobs for young people; we are also investing money in infrastructure projects, again within the limitations of the Welsh budget. The Welsh Minister for Business, Enterprise, Technology and Science is providing grants and loans to companies to help them to expand and get their businesses going, because we are having so much difficulty with the banks. For example, in my constituency, Tallent Automotive has received money to keep workers in work, which people are very pleased about, and EBS Automation, a very enterprising engineering firm, has received money to expand, which means new jobs for young people in a high-skilled field. Those are the sorts of programme that I would like to see from the UK Government. What the Welsh Government can do affects only a small part of the economy in Wales. I would like to see the same kind of stimulus across the UK. First and foremost, my concern is about the lack of a coherent growth strategy. Consumer confidence remains low. Many people fear that they may lose their job or have their hours cut. People have been hit hard by rising prices, which have been compounded by the VAT rise. Obviously, people on low and modest incomes have little spare income to put by, so their money goes straight back into the local economy. That contrasts with the money given away to millionaires at the top, who do not have to do anything with it immediately and do not know what they will do with it. They know that there is no benefit to them from putting it back into the local economy.