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My Lords, the Chancellor and I regularly discuss how we can promote small business. Yesterday, the Chancellor unveiled a budget for growth supporting new, small and growing businesses. Announcements included a 12-month business rate reduction for more than half a million small businesses, a doubling of the annual investment allowance to £100,000 and a doubling of the threshold to £2 million for entrepreneurs’ relief on capital gains tax. He announced that Her Majesty's Revenue will continue with "time to pay", which so far has involved £5.2 billion of delayed tax payment. So the Government are certainly not standing still in their support for small businesses.
Answered by
Lord Mandelson (Labour)
Type
Oral answers to questions
Date
25 March 2010
Reference
718 c1066
House
House of Lords
My Lords, I am very glad that the noble Lord, Lord Bates, has drawn this to my attention. I shall look at it and, if there is a problem with the administration, I shall see what can be done to simplify it.
Answered by
Lord Mandelson (Labour)
Type
Oral answers to questions
Date
25 March 2010
Reference
718 c1066
House
House of Lords
Yes, my Lords. My noble friend raises important issues and these are precisely the sorts of paths we need to pursue and issues we need to examine. UK Finance for Growth, which will be taking on responsibility for the Government to oversee new funding arrangements for small businesses, will pick up precisely those matters that my noble friend has identified.
Answered by
Lord Mandelson (Labour)
Type
Oral answers to questions
Date
25 March 2010
Reference
718 c1067-8
House
House of Lords
My Lords this seems like an issue that is a good candidate for the Better Regulation Executive in my department and I will refer the matter to it.
Answered by
Lord Mandelson (Labour)
Type
Oral answers to questions
Date
25 March 2010
Reference
718 c1067
House
House of Lords
No, the noble Lord, Lord Sugar, has other responsibilities and duties which he is fulfilling extremely well, working very hard across the country, much to the delight and encouragement of many small and medium-sized businesses in the country.
Answered by
Lord Mandelson (Labour)
Type
Oral answers to questions
Date
25 March 2010
Reference
718 c1067
House
House of Lords
My Lords, the issue of small businesses’ access to finance has been at the forefront of my mind for the past 18 months. I am very glad that the Chancellor was able to announce yesterday the creation of UK Finance for Growth—it represents an overall £4 billion of funding for SMEs, including growth capital to meet the needs of those small businesses that seek to expand but cannot get hold of growth capital to the extent that they want—as well as further lending commitments between the Government, RBS and Lloyds. We also announced the creation of a small business credit adjudicator, which will work with SMEs struggling to secure finance to ensure that they are better treated by the banks. I know that all the small business organisations, as well as the CBI and the Institute of Directors, have given a very strong welcome to all these measures.
Answered by
Lord Mandelson (Labour)
Type
Oral answers to questions
Date
25 March 2010
Reference
718 c1067
House
House of Lords
My Lords, the Government always insist on the value of training and adult skills for future jobs and growth and I underline that again today. Since 1997, we have expanded apprenticeships from 65,000 starts, which we inherited from the previous Government, to 240,000 starts in 2008-09, with the number rising since then. We are funding more apprenticeships than ever before in our country. In the financial year 2010-11 we will be investing over £1 billion. Of course, we can do better and we will seek to do so within the tighter financial climate that we are now entering.
Answered by
Lord Mandelson (Labour)
Type
Oral answers to questions
Date
25 March 2010
Reference
718 c1070
House
House of Lords
My Lords, it is true that I have been serving a long and recurrent apprenticeship for my current role. That is why, among other reasons, I am firmly committed to apprenticeship training for others. However, the figures that the noble Lord quotes about economically inactive people mask the fact that a rather large number of them are in full-time training and education, even though they may be registered as looking for work. While I strongly welcome the noble Lord’s support for further expansion of apprenticeships, training and further education, I hope that he will be able to have a word with his friend the shadow Chancellor to make sure that such activities are exempted from his plans for large-scale spending and investment cuts. The shadow Chancellor has made it clear again today that he has those in mind for the country should he ever be elected.
Answered by
Lord Mandelson (Labour)
Type
Oral answers to questions
Date
25 March 2010
Reference
718 c1070-1
House
House of Lords
My Lords, the decisions that have been taken in this area have, of course, been based on rigorous analysis of how to maintain a strong skills system that helps to get people into work, not least for adult learners, while finding the necessary efficiencies required to reduce the deficit. The Government are confident that we will continue to sustain a strong base of adult education in further education colleges.
Answered by
Lord Mandelson (Labour)
Type
Oral answers to questions
Date
25 March 2010
Reference
718 c1069-70
House
House of Lords
My Lords, the Government have a strong record of investment in further education and skills. The core investment remains high, at unprecedented levels. Despite efficiency savings, more funds than ever are going into post-16 education and training for this next financial year, including, I am glad to say, £8.2 billion for 16-to-18 learning and £3.5 billion for adult training places. I know that future adult learner reductions will be challenging for some colleges, but transitional funding arrangements will protect colleges from financial difficulty and I will make sure that that remains the case.
Answered by
Lord Mandelson (Labour)
Type
Oral answers to questions
Date
25 March 2010
Reference
718 c1070
House
House of Lords
No, my Lords, I am not denying that there will be an effect. All I am saying is that the modest reductions that we are proposing, in line with our commitment to reduce the deficit over the coming four years, require belt-tightening of this sort across the public sector. I cannot exempt FE colleges or adult learning courses from that, but this has to be seen in the context of the colossal catch-up investment that the Government have made available during the past 10 years, which we are not proposing to put into reverse.
Answered by
Lord Mandelson (Labour)
Type
Oral answers to questions
Date
25 March 2010
Reference
718 c1070
House
House of Lords
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills what discussions he had with the Chancellor of the Exchequer before the Budget on reducing the tax burden on small businesses.
Asked by
Lord Bates (Conservative)
Oral questions - Lead
Status
Answered
Date
25 March 2010
Reference
718 c1066
House
House of Lords
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills whether he undertook a cost-benefit analysis before deciding to reduce the funding of adult education in further education colleges.
Asked by
Lord Cotter (Liberal Democrat)
Oral questions - Lead
Status
Answered
Date
25 March 2010
Reference
718 c1069-70
House
House of Lords
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills what action he is taking to encourage manufacturing in the United Kingdom.
Asked by
Lord De Mauley (Conservative)
Oral questions - Lead
Status
Answered
Date
25 March 2010
Reference
718 c1068
House
House of Lords
The Government are fully committed to a strong future for British manufacturing, leading the world in new technologies and the transition to low carbon. We have earmarked almost £1 billion in investment to build key manufacturing capabilities in coming years, helping to turn UK research strengths in innovative technologies into commercial manufacturing opportunities.
Answered by
Lord Mandelson (Labour)
Type
Oral answers to questions
Date
25 March 2010
Reference
718 c1068
House
House of Lords
My Lords, the noble Lord must have been listening to a different Budget yesterday. If I can simply point out to him that the British manufacturing sector did not in fact contract in absolute terms during the course of the last decade— before the recession that is—its output in both value and volume has remained stable despite the fiercest possible competition. China now defines the global economy in a way that it did not even a decade ago. What is clear is that competition is going to get a lot tougher in decades to come and therefore we all have to raise our game, including in the Government, in the support that we give to manufacturing in this country.
Answered by
Lord Mandelson (Labour)
Type
Oral answers to questions
Date
25 March 2010
Reference
718 c1068
House
House of Lords
My Lords, the Government’s record is much better than that operating in the private sector. Since I challenged my central government colleagues to reduce their payment to a 10-day limit, most of them have successfully adopted that and are now operating it. The problem really lies in the private sector where there are many large companies which simply treat the companies that are supplying them as banks and insist on a 60, 70, 80 or 90-day payment period. That is completely unacceptable. I say to those in the private sector who are operating that sort of delayed payment system that they are putting in jeopardy the future of many businesses—small, medium-sized and somewhat bigger alike. I hope that they start revising their practice and approach in the payment of their invoices.
Answered by
Lord Mandelson (Labour)
Type
Oral answers to questions
Date
25 March 2010
Reference
718 c1069
House
House of Lords
We are committed in principle to the strategy and adopting the measures recommended by the Space Innovation and Growth Team, which is why on Monday at the conference I announced government funding for the new International Space Innovation Centre at Harwell in Oxfordshire. We will be following up with other measures. If he does not mind my slightly correcting his pronunciation, it was actually "Space Man-dy".
Answered by
Lord Mandelson (Labour)
Type
Oral answers to questions
Date
25 March 2010
Reference
718 c1069
House
House of Lords
I do not know anyone who supports a unilateral imposition of a levy on British banks, apart of course from the Leader of her Majesty’s Opposition—although I notice that by the end of the day, following his speech on Saturday, even he is becoming decidedly wobbly on the issue.
Answered by
Lord Mandelson (Labour)
Type
Oral answers to questions
Date
25 March 2010
Reference
718 c1068
House
House of Lords

To ask Her Majesty's Government whether Mr Stephen Byers has spoken to the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, Lord Mandelson, about food labelling regulations; and, if so, what was (a) the date on which the contact took place, and (b) the nature of the contact.

Asked by
Lord Hunt of Wirral (Conservative)
Type
Written questions
Status
Answered
Date
24 March 2010
Reference
3055; 718 c296WA
House
House of Lords