Industry and Exports (Financial Support) Bill

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am glad that my hon. Friend was allowed to make his point, which I think I would have made. The double guarantee is clearly unacceptable because taxpayers' money is being provided for a purpose—to share the risk so that we might help the flow of business credit in a difficult environment for businesses. Several cases about banks' activities have come through my postbag. I take each one up with the relevant banks in the hope that they realise that politicians in the House get to learn how badly they are behaving, and that they might bear that in mind before shaking the tin for more money for their greed and extravagance, which got them into the current position. In one case, a gentleman who runs a small business had an overdraft of £10,000 and was forced to take out a loan to pay it off when he had no difficulties with his credit record. He had an order book that would have sufficed to make the payments. I am told that the bank has a policy of acting in such a way and I am pursuing the matter. We have got ourselves into an intolerable position whereby the banks, having accepted considerable sums of public money, do not do the decent thing and share the burden of the risk with the taxpayer and with companies in difficult times. If they did that, it would ideally get us over the hump of our current difficulties and into a more normal world, in which companies can make money without taxpayers' help and the taxpayer can be repaid the huge sums of money that have been disbursed to keep the system alive and to prevent even more catastrophic circumstances. Matters need to be righted swiftly so that taxpayers are not as exposed as they are in the current environment. The banks still have a long way to go. I hope that the Minister will take issue with them, as part of the exercise under the Bill, inasmuch as it affects the banking industry, over some of their schemes and their treatment of businesses. The automotive sector has been mentioned. The car sector needs clarity of vision and leadership from the Government about exactly what they want. We understand that there were difficulties with the European Union about getting permission for various guarantees. However, before the crisis arose, there was over-supply in the car sector, and many people said that too many people produced cars. I am worried that, in such difficult times, those who get in first to protect their car industry will be those who survive with a car industry. We do not want to find that other countries have been able to protect their viable car industries in such a way that companies that have not received help and will find trading difficult because of the general economic environment, are left more vulnerable in the wider shake-out through over-supply in the international market for car production. We know that the American car companies—the GMs and the Fords—have been trying to divest themselves of their European operations. There are lots of car companies in need of a friend at the moment. I worry that those Governments who are bigger friends to their car industries will find that they actually have a car industry left when this is all over and that those who are not as proactive in ensuring the best deal for their car operations might find that they do not have one. I ask the Government vigorously to pursue their policy on the automotive sector—whatever it is going to be—because the sector is in such a vulnerable position. We do quite well in cars and we would like to keep it that way. I therefore look forward to hearing more about what the Government plan for the sector. The way my hon. Friend the Member for Hertford and Stortford described the various schemes that are now available to businesses to help them take advantage of Government support through the present economic environment could have been part of a comedy sketch. For a company that has so many other problems on its hands, the idea of wading its way through Government bureaucracy and all the different Government schemes to find which one might help it is not realistic in the times in which we live. I sit on the Select Committee on Business and Enterprise, but unless I write them all down, I cannot remember all the schemes that my hon. Friend mentioned that the Government have come out with in the past few months to help businesses. If we in this House cannot do that, how can we expect people in the real world to know any better? For example, a constituent came to my surgery a month ago who was really keen on the capital for enterprise fund, which used to be the equity swap fund, as it could help his business. He approached the banks, which knew nothing about the initiative, but were happy to fill in the paperwork and see whether they could find something out. He made an inquiry to DBERR and was given a number. Obviously he was pleased to have the number, because it made him feel that someone had registered him on the system. I immediately wrote to the Department to ask, "When can he hear more news? Is he being assessed for the scheme? When might it start?" and so on. The response: radio silence. I have not heard a thing. I know that the Department is busy, but if those schemes are to make any difference to our industrial sector, we ought to have some answers. My constituent should know whether he is being assessed under the scheme. We had a statement before this debate, and it was interesting that when my hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Mr. Fallon), who sits on the Select Committee on Treasury, asked the Chancellor whether he could identify one scheme, from among all the things that the Treasury has announced of late, that was operational and was benefiting companies in the real world in the UK, the Chancellor could identify only one. The deferral of VAT was the only scheme that he could identify as offering any help to any business in the UK today. That has to be a terribly sad indictment of a Government who have known that the economy is falling apart since last October. Lord Mandelson came to the Business and Enterprise Committee in early January to set out the steps that the Government were going to take. I challenged him on how speedily the measures would be operational, but I got the usual tardy response from the noble Lord about how everything would be all right. The general tenor of his response to me was: "How dare you ask such an impertinent question?" Yet here we are, on 16 March, and none of the schemes that we were told would be activated so speedily has happened.