Business Rates and the Recession

I was trying to take the chuntering from the Opposition Front-Bench team seriously, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I am not sure how they can say that no action has been taken and everything is simply spin, given that we stepped in to prevent the collapse of the banking system. We did so because it is important to savers, pensioners, householders and mortgage payers—all of us—and businesses that we have a banking system in which banks do not go bust and which gets back as quickly as possible to the proper of business of banking: lending to support the British economy, lending to support firms and lending to support families. Similarly, I should mention the help that we have given to try to keep companies in business, people in work and families in their homes, and the action that we are now taking to try to ensure a proper international system of regulation in order to cut the risks of such a meltdown in the global financial system in the future.