Pat McFadden
MP for Wolverhampton South East · Labour · United Kingdom
“In his review Alan Milburn considered that issue and said that, “the UK’s NEET crisis is much more long-term and deep-seated than any decisions taken in the last few years.” As I said earlier, 400,000 more people are in work this year than last year, and the number of young people in employment is up since the election.”
“Since our last DWP questions, both Alan Milburn and the Pensions Commission have published their respective interim reports on young people and on the current state of saving for retirement. I look forward to receiving their final reports later in the year.”
“As Alan Milburn pointed out in his recent report, the UK’s NEET crisis is much more long-term and deep-seated than any decisions taken in the last few years. There are 400,000 more people in work than last year. The number of young people in employment is up by 74,000 since the election.”
“I thank the right hon. Gentleman and send him commiserations for whatever has left him reliant on his crutches today. I am happy to congratulate the businesses he mentioned in his constituency. He raises a serious point: it is important not only to come up with the right policy, but to make it simple for businesses to use.”
“My hon. Friend is right, and I thank Cardiff football club for being a partner. We are supporting nearly 1 million young people and creating up to half a million opportunities for jobs and training.”
“We are making strong progress on expanding youth hubs, with around 130 already in operation across Great Britain. In March, I announced the locations that we want to open in this year, and I have just announced a further 180 locations for the following two years.”
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“It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mrs Riordan. I congratulate my constituency neighbour, the hon. Member for Wolverhampton South West (Paul Uppal), on securing the debate. My other neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich West (Mr Bailey), the Chair of the Select Committee on Business, Innovation and Skills, said that he would have liked to be here, but he has Select Committee business. This is an important debate because it is really about the hinge between the area’s past and its future. Wolverhampton and the wider black country rightly are proud of the industrial heritage that they enjoy. They are proud of the great names that put their stamp on the area. In my constituency, those names include Stewarts and Lloyds, Sankey’s, GKN, Rolls-Royce and Sunbeam. Those names ring through the years.”
“We need the right skills and the right decision-making framework, nationally and locally, and we need the backing of Government to make it happen.”
“The figures for unemployment, business failure and home repossession are all significantly lower for the recession we are coming out of than they were in the previous ones. Our challenge now is to take the strong history and identity that I mentioned at the beginning of my speech and bend it to a new purpose. Our opportunity is there. We have a strong aerospace cluster: let us use it to win more trade and business. The economy is shifting towards lower-carbon purposes. Let us use the excellence and creativity of the manufacturing tradition, so that we can take opportunities in the automotive field and other low-carbon fields. The creative industries are a growing percentage of the economy and they should also be supported and nurtured in the local economy, as should distribution industries and retail, and many more.”
“I believe that the Government will have given a false prospectus to businesses in the black country and, indeed, elsewhere in the country if, having worked so hard to put the partnerships together, they do not get the resources to deliver. We shall watch closely to see whether their effort is matched by Government effort to provide those resources. If that does not happen, it is not only the business people who have worked so hard, but our constituents, who will feel very let down. These have been tough times for the black country economy. It was hit hard by the recession. Although unemployment is high, the interventions made by the previous Labour Government had an effect in stopping recession turning into depression.”
“They made their decision to abolish the regional development agency. I would not have made it, but it has been made, and the question is what to do in the future. I pay tribute to the business people from around the black country who have worked so hard to put the local enterprise partnership project together. As we were briefed by Mr Stewart Towe last week at a meeting with the black country chamber of commerce, those people have identified a serious agenda involving skills, planning and some of the issues that we have been discussing, including transport, on which they want to take action. However, they need resources to do that, and the regional growth fund is already heavily oversubscribed.”
“The city council has produced new plans, including the plan for the Bilston corridor. I recently attended a meeting of the Metro business partnership, which represents businesses sited along the Metro line, between the city centre and Bilston. It was ably chaired by Anna-Maria McAuliffe of the McAuliffe construction group. The concern expressed by a number of businesses was about whether we get the right balance between allocation of land for housing and for future employment. I think that in a constituency that is in the top 15 for unemployment it is important to allow potential for business to locate, and for jobs to be created. We should not get that balance wrong. As to the local enterprise partnership, we could go back over Government decisions but I do not propose to.”
“After I went there I visited a private sector development along the black country route, where a new car auction will be opened. The owners told me that at least 15 new jobs will be created there. Although we have had bad news, therefore, developments are going ahead in the city and we must build on that fact. We must do better in decision making. The supermarket wars that affected the constituency of the hon. Member for Wolverhampton South West and my own constituency dragged on far too long. The problem was that although the different supermarkets may have owned the land they were not the only owners of the interest in the matter. The people of Wolverhampton also had an interest, which was in major sites not lying fallow for years while landowners fought battles in court, and in not having such blight on major parts of the city.”
“The increased visibility of the police presence in the town is very welcome. Of course it is a pity and an irony that we are opening a new police station at the moment when the number of police in the West Midlands police force is set to be cut significantly; but the police station itself is of course welcome. I was also able to tour the partially built new Bilston leisure centre. That is also a multi-million pound project. It is part of the Bilston urban village project, which is so important to the future of my constituency. It will have a new swimming pool, a training pool, indoor sports courts and a gymnasium. It is a crucial investment, not just because of its construction, but for quality of life and the future health of the local people.”
“Sometimes those two things are in tension, which is why the Labour Government made planning changes towards the end of their period in office to try to speed up the granting of permission for major projects, which has been too slow. My question as regards the rhetoric and practice of more localism is whether that tension will lead to businesses becoming frustrated about future planning and decision making. The truth is that we cannot say for certain at the moment, but it would be wrong to deny that there is a danger, because there is. Although projects have been cancelled—in addition to Summer Row there has been the announcement by Hilton Hotels—there are also projects going ahead. On Friday I had the pleasure of being at the opening of the new Bilston police station, a development of several million pounds at the heart of the town.”
“It is sad that the project is not going ahead, but we at least have clarity now, and we can plan for the future. However, I have an important question for the Government. I do not really expect the Minister to go into this in much detail, but if I was a betting man, I would say that robust discussions were taking place between his Department—Business, Innovation and Skills—and the Department for Communities and Local Government. There is a legitimate desire for localism and for people to be more involved in local decision making, but the Minister and the hon. Gentleman will also know that major investors want clarity and speed.”
“My hon. Friend makes a good point. The Institute for Fiscal Studies said that the maintenance allowances paid for themselves, given the benefits of higher participation in further education in the future. Issues such as transport have an important impact when families are often making decisions in difficult financial situations. The question of skills and equipping people for the future is therefore absolutely central to the economic future of Wolverhampton and the wider black country. I want to touch on a point that the hon. Member for Wolverhampton South West made about decision making and planning, because it is crucial. He mentioned the Summer Row development, which dragged on for years. The fact is that the economics never really stacked up in the recession in the way they did beforehand.”
“I endorse what my hon. Friend said about the Black Country Reinvestment Society. Every time we meet businesses, they question us about access to credit, difficulties with the banks, the terms of loans and all sorts of other conditions being changed—and sometimes refusals, which makes life harder for them. The society plays a crucial role in filling that market gap by lending to small businesses that cannot otherwise get credit. It helps them to survive, to grow and to employ. I am sure my hon. Friend will acknowledge that many in our region have supported the society’s bid to the regional growth fund precisely because it fills that gap. Daily experience tells us that the banks are not filling it.”
“Does my hon. Friend agree that the other important point about that state help is that it is not just the Government going around signing cheques for business, as it has sometimes been characterised, but their playing a, usually, small role in levering in significantly more private sector investment? One of the striking characteristics of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills figures on the grants for business investment scheme is that for every £1 spent by the Government £10 more was levered in from the private sector. This is not, therefore, just about propping up failing industries or holding back the future, it is about the Government playing a small role to get the private sector to play a far bigger one.”
“Therefore—this is a factual question; I do not want to enter into a debate about the whys and wherefores of Train to Gain—will he acknowledge that, given the cost of one apprenticeship, for which we trained three or four people under the Train to Gain scheme, if we fast-forward two years or so, the Government will actually be funding fewer learners at work than they are today?”
“I thank the Minister for giving way. I wanted to intervene before he moved on from apprenticeships, but I did not want to cut short his answer to the hon. Member for Wolverhampton South West (Paul Uppal). When I was in the Minister’s shoes and had some responsibility for these issues, we put more funds into what we called higher-level or technician-level apprenticeships, precisely in order to address the skills gaps that have been referred to. Will he acknowledge that a significant proportion of the funds that the Government are putting into apprenticeships is coming from the Train to Gain scheme?”
“We could have a debate about the benefits, but my question concerns the number of people at work being helped by Government support. The Minister must know the answer. Will he acknowledge that in two years, there will be fewer learners at work funded by Government as a result of the decision to switch Government money from the Train to Gain budget, as he outlined?”
“I appreciate what my right hon. Friend is saying about his local citizens advice bureau. In Wolverhampton, the citizens advice bureau handles some 1,600 cases a year that are funded by such help, involving 26 employees. The local director has said: “The CAB would effectively go back 20 years in its development” if the current proposals go through. In response to the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake), who spoke a few moments ago, would my right hon. Friend care to contrast those proposals with the record of the Labour Government, who increased the funding to citizens advice bureaux when the recession was coming, precisely because we knew that there would be a greater need for debt advice as economic times got tough?”
“There are those on the Government Benches, including the Secretary of State, who is no longer in his place, who previously called for the Department to be abolished, and who thought that there was no role for Government to play in fostering growth, apart from getting out of the way. That is not our view; we believe that there is an important and active role in fostering growth. I take issue with one of the arguments that the Secretary of State has deployed time after time since the election—that the actions taken by the present Government would have been taken by Labour because we were committed to the same level of cuts. It is not true. The Government have launched a programme of cuts which is tens of billions of pounds more than anything that was being planned by the Labour Government, and he cannot continue to rest on that argument.”
“We should begin the debate by considering, as the motion asks us to do, the role of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. It has in recent years become a major spending Department, with the stewardship of universities and further education colleges. It is different from other Departments in that, uniquely, it stands on the boundary of the public and private sectors. Its job is to sell Britain abroad as a great location for doing business, and to help UK businesses to penetrate foreign markets. It is also, of course, the key location for business and employees to come to Government with business-related issues. It is, as the Secretary of State has described, the Department for growth—or it should be. How Government achieve that growth—the role of Government in helping to foster growth—is what divides the House.”
“On transport, we worked with the Department for Transport on an ultra-low-carbon vehicle strategy. In other words, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills played a leading and co-ordinating role to take advantage of the industrial and employment opportunities of the future. That is what we were doing to try to foster growth and employment.”
“If the hon. Gentleman casts his mind back a little more than a year to the pre-Budget report, he will find that cuts in spending were set out by the Department while I was a Minister there. He simply needs to read the pre-Budget report. I admit that over time during the Labour Government our view on the Department’s role shifted. In the early days we were, perhaps, too reluctant to intervene in markets, but we got to the point where we were playing a much more active role and co-ordinating activity across Whitehall on key industrial and employment opportunities. For example, with the Department of Energy and Climate Change, we produced the low carbon industrial strategy to achieve the most for UK industry out of the shift to low carbon power generation.”
“My hon. Friend is right. The sad fact is that whereas we wanted to support General Motors in its plans for restructuring in Europe, by the time the current Government got round to making a decision on that, Vauxhall had decided to go away and sort out its own financing. Let me turn to some of the issues that have arisen since the election. We could trade quotes from Sir Richard Lambert all day, so let us be candid about what he said last week. He said that he agreed with the Government on the deficit reduction strategy, but he thought that there was no wider vision for the economy and there was a danger that the Department was turning into a “talking shop”. That is a fair summary of Sir Richard Lambert’s speech.”
“How does he feel that the soft power that is gained from the UK as a wonderful location to study will be affected by the new proposals on restricting the right to work of people who come here to study? How does that help us to sell Britain abroad as an attractive location for investment? The truth is that business is concerned about the difference between commentary and delivery that we see in the current Department. That is the difference between opposition and government. The Secretary of State, having lost the battles over LEPs, where the Department for Communities and Local Government appears to be running the show, and over immigration policy, has been left to bet the farm on the banking commission. It is not even fully within his control. Business will want to see less commentary and more delivery in future.”
“Further, those grants are specifically geared to the assisted areas—areas that need help most, such as my own in the west midlands. We met people from the Black Country local enterprise partnership a few days ago. I pay tribute to the business people in that area who have worked so hard to pull together the Black Country LEP. I reflect a fear and a concern, which I suspect are shared elsewhere. Despite the commitment of the business people, will they get the support that they need from the regional growth fund? That fund is grossly oversubscribed. If business has put in the effort but Government do not back those bids and projects, business will rightly feel let down, and my constituents will rightly feel let down by the prospectus that has been offered. On trade and immigration, the Minister for Universities and Science is in his place.”
“What he did not mention was the fact that we were going through the biggest wave of globalisation in world economic history. He takes an entirely national view, when there was profound change going on in constituencies such as mine and other black country constituencies in manufacturing during that period. The programme of grants for business investment has been responsible in the past six years for some £400 million of grants to small and medium-sized mostly manufacturing businesses. Fewer than one in five of the grants is more than £1 million. Those grants have supported some 1,800 projects, secured almost £4 billion in investment, and helped to secure almost 80,000 jobs. How on earth does abolishing that programme fit in with rhetoric about trying to rebalance the economy?”
“I will not give way because I want to make progress. What business wants is for the Department to be winning battles in Whitehall. That, sadly, has not been happening. The Department and the Government talk about rebalancing the economy. By that we mean rebalancing away from an excessive dependence on financial services and from excessive dependence on certain parts of the country. How, then, can the Government justify in their first Budget cutting some £2.8 billion in investment allowances to manufacturing industry? The corporation tax cut, which has been mentioned, adds up to a benefit of £2.7 billion. In other words, what has happened is that manufacturing industry is paying for a tax cut for the rest of the economy. The Secretary of State referred to the decline in manufacturing as a proportion of output and of employment.”
“My hon. Friend rightly draws attention to the fact that there is a housing standards problem in the private sector as well as in the public sector. I wish him to reflect on the situation facing Wolverhampton Homes, which is an ALMO that is a little more than halfway through its decent homes programme. It was expecting, according to the expenditure trajectory, some £100 million over the next two years. It has been estimated that if that were to fall by 40%, 5,000 non-decent homes would be left in the city in the public sector, let alone in the private sector, and there would have to be hundreds of redundancies. What kind of economic or social sense can that make, halfway through a programme in a city with one of the highest unemployment rates in the country?”
“Yes, this is a matter of public spending levels, but it is also a matter of the profile of the cuts, which is adding to the difficulties of ALMOs that are trying to carry out the decent homes programme.”
“It is a matter not just of the total amount of spending, but of the profile of the spending that is being cut. My local ALMO, Wolverhampton Homes, fears that the cuts will be front-loaded and that it will be in the ludicrous position of having to lay off hundreds of people when it might be looking to hire more in a couple of years’ time. It will not be able to do things in a balanced way. That would not have happened under a Labour Government; we would have supported a programme that is providing important employment in my city, as well as improving the homes for tenants, who, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) said, have been waiting far too long.”
“The debate at the heart of government on these issues has been based on the wrong premise that it is the laws put in place by the previous Government to protect the public against terrorism that pose a threat to our liberties. The threat to our liberties comes from those who want to kill innocent people. Today’s announcement waters down the control that we have over terrorist suspects, increases the risk that we would lose control over those suspects, and increases costs and pressures on our hard-pressed security services. Does the Home Secretary accept that, if one of the people currently subject to those restrictions is found to be engaged in a terrorist act, the public will rightly look back on this announcement as both dangerous and complacent?”
“The Secretary of State has been right to say that as long as the taxpayer acts as a guarantor of the banking industry, the Government have a legitimate interest in remuneration, specifically in banks in which the state has a large stake. Will he therefore tell the House what he and the Chancellor mean when they say that no option will be taken off the table if the bonus round is not agreed to the Government’s satisfaction? In other words, what specific actions will the Government take if they are not satisfied with the outcome of the bonus round?”
“Will the Leader of the House schedule a debate on the future of the financial inclusion fund and the wider issue of funding for citizens advice bureaux? The citizens advice bureau in the city of Wolverhampton does a fantastic job, and I am sure bureaux do so in the constituencies of right hon. and hon. Members across the House. Does he accept that it is perverse to be cutting funds to citizens advice bureaux for advice on debt relief and financial management at the same time as the Government are making wider cuts in benefits that are driving more people to seek the advice for which they are cutting the funding?”
“My hon. Friend is right to say that the Government have based their whole case for withdrawing EMA on the research that she mentioned. The Minister will base his case on that research, saying that only a minority of students say that they would not have pursued any course at all if they had not received EMA, but that is not the sole point, is it? Surely the point is the level of sacrifice that families will have to make so that their young people can pursue education. Does the Minister accept that if he withdraws EMA, even from those students who say that they would proceed with a course, the sacrifice that families have to make will be increased, particularly among those who need the help most—students with learning disabilities, teen parents and those from the poorest families? Does he really want to pursue that policy?”
“We did, however, see a big increase in opportunity and participation, following the changes of 2004.”
“The Browne review takes as its starting-point the changes that the Labour Government introduced in 2004. We all know that those changes were politically difficult, but they achieved two major things: they brought more money into universities and they resulted in a large increase in higher education participation, including and, indeed, particularly among students from poorer backgrounds. The Higher Education Funding Council for England released figures earlier this year showing that, back in 2004, just one in eight young people from the poorest backgrounds went to university; it is now one in five. Of course there is still a gap in participation rates between rich and poor. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) showed this week, our top universities must do much more to attract a wider variety of students.”
“Let us be clear, given that the point about part-time students has been portrayed as some great gift from the Government, that the Labour Government explicitly built that into the terms of reference for the Browne review. It is also right to place a greater emphasis on providing more and better information for students about the quality of courses and teaching. If students are being asked to pay more, they deserve more power within the system, even if that is sometimes uncomfortable for academics or institutions.”
“We are probably all agreed that the top universities can and should do more to attract ethnic minority students. As my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) said, there are some good points in the Browne report. Browne was right to maintain the position whereby fees are not paid up front by students, but by graduates and only after they start earning. This has been portrayed as a new change in the system, but it is not; it has been there since the 2004 changes, although it is still widely misunderstood. Browne is also right to increase the repayment threshold and to include part-time students in the system.”
“I was coming to that, because Browne also called for an increase in participation of 10%, yet one of the first acts of this Government was to cut the number of student places by 10,000 when compared with the plans that Labour had put in place. Since the election, both Tory and Lib Dem Ministers have repeatedly attacked Labour’s aim to have a participation rate of 50% for our young people. Their attack on higher participation is an attack on opportunity, which we should resist. I stress that participation is about not just the fee level, but getting people to the point where they can make the choice in the first place. Therefore, abolishing the education maintenance allowance and Aimhigher is a direct attack on participation and opportunity for young people.”
“They are in the chair, and to govern is to choose. The commitment was not just a line in their manifesto but front and centre of their holier-than-thou election campaign. The truth is that they will never be thought of in the same way again.”
“That is the problem with the proposals. Higher education brings a shared benefit to the country and to individuals. As it is a shared benefit, and we believe in a high level of participation, we share the costs. That was Labour’s approach when we made changes in 1998 and 2004. Instead of sharing the cost, the Government’s plans go wrong by replacing, to a large degree, the responsibility of the state with that of the individual. That is why fees are being driven up so much. The politics of this does matter. The Liberal Democrats are in such trouble not just because they have broken an election promise, but because what they have done is a revelation about how they have conducted politics for years. They signed the NUS pledge because they did not think that they would be in the chair when the music stopped.”
“I will not give way again, as there is not much time remaining. There is one big problem with the Government’s package: the degree of the reduction in the teaching grant for universities. That is what is forcing the fees so high. Hon. Members have even referred to Labour’s cuts announced this time last year. Let us do a comparison: we announced a small reduction of 1.6% in the teaching grant; the Government’s proposals are accompanied by an 80% reduction in the teaching grant. That is a huge transfer of responsibility and cost from the state to the individual, and it lies at the root of the large increase in fees. Also, rather than the package resulting in more resources for universities, it requires large fees just for universities to be able to stand still. Therefore, the issue is not so much the Browne review as the spending review.”
“As the Minister said, 24 bids were approved, but bids for many areas of the country, including for the black country, were not approved. Local enterprise partnerships will not have the same resources as the RDAs, which are currently spending about £1.5 billion a year in England. How are local enterprise partnerships supposed to help to rebalance the economy if they do not have the resources? Surely setting up these organisations and asking business to lead them is letting those business people down if the Government do not play their part and give them the resources they need to do the job.”
“My right hon. Friend mentioned the record of higher standards under the Labour Government. Like me, I am sure that he welcomes the fact that young people from the poorest areas are 30% more likely to go on to higher education than they were five years ago. Does he agree that not only higher standards but education maintenance allowances played a significant role in encouraging people to stay on at school, perhaps for the first time in a family? What will be the effect of the Government’s plans to abolish education maintenance allowances?”
“The Secretary of State mentioned the academy programme. I am a supporter of the academy programme that the Labour Government introduced. It gave hope and higher standards to children who had not been given the opportunities that they deserved under what went before. Earlier this year, he issued his list, which said that the Building Schools for the Future programme in the city that I represent would be unaffected by the changes, and that programme includes two city academies, one of which is in my constituency. However, they are now being told that there will be a cut in that programme of up to 40%. How can he say that the programme is unaffected and that that will not have an impact on opportunity for those children who need it most?”
“Britain is playing no leading role, and the leading economies of the world are gathering together in an atmosphere of tension over exchange rates and trade imbalances. What a contrast between the London meeting and the one currently taking place. Of course we all want to see economic growth, but it is also crucial for growth to be evenly spread throughout the country. We enjoyed many years of economic growth before the recession, and Labour put in place a determined and active sub-national policy to ensure that that happened.”
“This is a timely debate. We have learned that my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North East (Mr Bain) was making speeches about growth when he was but eight years old, so we know that there has been significant interest in this matter across the House for some time. We meet here today at the same time as the G20 meets in Seoul, and I wish to contrast the role that Britain played when the G20 met in London with what is happening at the current meeting. At the London meeting, the then Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown), led the debate, shaped the debate and helped to pull the leading economies of the world together on an agenda that helped to prevent recession from turning into depression. What is happening at this meeting?”
“The Government have abolished eight regional development agencies and we now have what the director general of the CBI calls “a shambles” coming to replace them. The process appears to be being run not by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills but by the Department for Communities and Local Government. It has to be rescued, or it will do real economic damage. More points could be made in the debate, but they will have to be made by others given the time limits. There is a profound difference in our view: the Government are engaged in faith-based economics, stepping out of the way, whereas we believe in an active role for Government in securing economic growth.”
“Friend the Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves) said, what happened at Sheffield Forgemasters was not just a lost opportunity for one company but a lost opportunity for the country, because it could have made us a world leader in civil nuclear supply. Let me say one more word about that project. The Government, having run out of excuses, now say, “It is a good project, but it’s unaffordable,” while in the same breath boasting about having a regional growth fund of £1.4 billion. If they really have that regional growth fund, why was its first decision not to reverse that mistake and grant the loan to Sheffield Forgemasters? I approve of the action taken on AgustaWestland, but I do not see the difference between the two proposals. Thirdly, we must do better on sub-national economic growth and development.”
“The truth is that we can have all the debates that we like about growth in this House, but unless the banks play their proper role we will not see the economic growth that we need. Secondly, we need proper financial support for industry. We have been too hidebound by a fear of talking about picking winners. This has inhabited Governments—I include my Government in this—from playing their proper role in the economy. Of course that has to be done with care and with discerning judgment, but if we want to take advantage of the economic opportunities of the future—the transition to low carbon, the opportunities presented by the digital economy and other such matters—Government must play their role. As my hon.”
“Businesses say that banks will not lend to them or will do so only on usurious terms, whereas banks say, “There’s a lack of demand, and look at all the billions we’re lending.” The present Government say that the banks ran rings around the Labour Government, but the more they ramp up the rhetoric the more they expose their own weakness, and their impotence to do anything about the situation. After six months of this Government, we have heard nothing that will increase bank lending to business. I suggest that we should have a proper contract in place that goes something like this: the taxpayer rescued the banks from financial collapse, so we need a new consensus on the role of banking, which is that, as that rescue had to take place, the banks must play their proper role in putting forward finance for businesses to invest and grow.”