David Cameron has offered £4.1 billion in tax cuts for pensioners and savers
More...
Brown: I'll get banks lending
Joe Murphy and Nicholas Cecil19.11.08
NEW action to make it easier for small firms and homeowners to borrow from banks will be in the mini-budget next week, Gordon Brown indicated today.
He said there would be measures applying to all banks, not just those which were rescued with taxpayers' money.
"The issue now is how the banks will resume funding to small businesses and homeowners," he said at Prime Minister's Question Time this afternoon.
"We are in discussion with the banks about, first of all, how HBOS, Lloyds TSB and Royal Bank of Scotland can achieve their promise that they will have activity for lending and marketing of lending at the level of 2007.
"Secondly, how all the banks can resume funding. We will be bringing forward proposals very soon indeed."
His promise came under fire from Tory leader David Cameron, who had demanded action to make banks treat small firms better and to pass on interest rate cuts to homeowners.
Citing the cases of small firms hit with overdraft charges, he said: "Don't cases like this show that what's been done so far has not yet worked properly and we need to do more on the credit side to make sure that small businesses like this aren't strangled."
Mr Cameron's intervention came after business chiefs begged Chancellor Alistair Darling for a £1billion lifeline to stop hundreds of thousands of small firms going bust.
They appealed to the Government to set up a survival fund to help Britain's 4.7million small businesses get through the recession.
John Wright, national chairman of the Federation of Small Businesses, said: "One in three small businesses is unable to obtain finance. A similar number of businesses say that they are seriously considering closing should the current credit climate continue."
Link to:
Reader views (10)
Here's a sample of the latest views published. You can click view all to read all views that readers have sent in.
Crash Gordon should leave. That would do wonders for the pound sterling, the stockmarket and more importantly for our country and its economy.
- Georgie, Islington, London
Either Gordon is pandering to the fiscal illiterate or he is a fiscal illiterate!
His entire ponzi credit boom has all the foundations of a house in quick sand, borrow spend and debt are the remit of this Labour government and the next 2 generations shall pay heavily for this complete mis-mangement and non productive credit boom & bust they have championed.
So please tell me Gordon Brown...how on earth are people going to be taking up 100% mortgages when there are job cuts & redundancies being announced at a rate never before known? It is frightening to think that this fool is running (and ruining) the country and even more frightening that there are more people in the UK who think he is doing a good job!
This Gordon is a UK problem NOT a US problem you have already bled the country resources dry and maxed out credit, the answer is hard work and produce, not borrow, credit, and yet more debt!
- Mark, London
The priority, if he INSISTS on mortgaging the future of two or three generations, should be lending to business. When you read through these fatuous statements Brown and Darling make just focus on the word 'homeowners', not businesses. That's what they mean.
This bunch are so utterly short term in their thinking, with no grasp of basic economics, past present or future.
Some debt can be productive. Some can not. This whole fireworks show is for the benefit of the debt that is unproductive, divisive, rapacious and untenable.
Don't believe a word. Observe what they do, not what they say.
What they are doing is putting everything on Red 13.
- Dave Hall, Stafford, UK
