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Budget Resolutions

Proceeding contribution from Kevin Hollinrake (Conservative) in the House of Commons on Tuesday, 17 March 2020. It occurred during Budget debate on Budget Resolutions.

My right hon. Friend makes a very good point. One of the difficulties with the announcement last night was that it was not brought forward with a package of remediation or mitigation. I think that has come today, and clarity of that is very welcome.

We are going to need to pump hundreds of billions of pounds—not the odd billion, £5 billion or £10 billion—into the economy. I think the Chancellor has announced today £330 billion-worth of loans for the business sector, which is absolutely right, with £25,000 for businesses that are not insured for losses from business interruption, plus business rates holidays and three-month mortgage holidays, which is also absolutely right. If we talk about this in terms of hundreds of billions of pounds, the natural question is: where are we going to get that money from? This is a time when we have to set aside the fiscal rules. We will be paying for this anyway, in lost jobs and businesses, redundancy payments and reductions in tax receipts, if we do not put a huge fiscal stimulus into the system right now, so I welcome the measures from the Chancellor.

We need a few things in addition. We saw in 2008 that banks did not support businesses through that financial crisis—there is no doubt about it; in fact, quite the opposite. We need a commitment from the banks, UK Finance and the Treasury that they will continue to cash-flow businesses for as much as they need until they get through this period. To make sure that they do that, we should introduce emergency legislation to bring SME loans and financing commercial loans within the regulatory perimeter. That would mean that banks would have to have the oversight of the Financial Conduct Authority, and indeed of Members in this place, if they did not do the right thing through that period.

Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
673 c893 
Session
2019-21
Chamber / Committee
House of Commons chamber
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