Amendment of the law

Today's Budget is against the backdrop of a banking crisis that has in the past year become an economic crisis and is now a social crisis. Witness the problems in Europe, whether we are talking about France, Spain, Greece, or the Republic of Ireland, not to mention the central European countries. Against that backdrop, thousands of jobs have been lost and many more people have had cuts in their working hours and wages. When the Treasury Committee visited a number of regions in the UK just over a month ago—we went to Edinburgh, Belfast and Halifax—we came across owners of small businesses who feared bankruptcy, home owners who feared repossessions and many more people who simply feared the unknown. Mention has been made of help for young people, particularly students and school leavers, about 600,000 of whom will be leaving education this summer for an uncertain job market. In the past, there existed a social contract where individuals as well as companies were free to prosper or fail on their own merits, but with the collapse of the banking sector and the necessity to rescue the banks, which took devastating risks with ordinary people's money, that social contract has been damaged. Trust and confidence in the banking sector need to be re-established. That will not be an easy task; it will be a long and painful task. In the midst of that, people are looking for a fairer society, which is why I welcome a number of the measures announced by the Chancellor today. The Treasury Committee will be scrutinising the Budget over the next week; indeed, we will have three evidence-taking sessions and will hopefully be able to report to the House in time for Second Reading of the Finance Bill a week on Tuesday. When we scrutinised the 2008 pre-Budget report, the Committee recognised the uncertainty of the economic outlook, but was concerned that the Treasury's forecasts were on the optimistic side, as has been proved. In the next week or two, we will cast a scrutinising eye over these growth forecasts and the plans over the next six or 10 years to balance the budget to achieve an even fiscal landscape. I have already mentioned the Treasury Committee visits around the country. We found that access to lending was an important issue then, as it still is now. The banks claim that they are increasing access to credit, but we heard in our visits that small businesses were still unable to access the lending that they need to keep going. The work of the Lending Panel, which the Government have established, is hugely important. I would like to see the results of that panel published at least every quarter, so that we can keep a handle on exactly what the banks are doing and on how much lending is actually taking place.