Speeches by McDougall.

“In the five-year strategy, we reckon that guarantees will unlock £10 billion of financing.”

“No, it absolutely does, which is why we are putting money in through the various guarantee schemes, through the British Business Bank, to bring down that price, enable greater lending and deal with that risk appetite.”

“I would have to get back to you with an exact figure.”

“It is a figure that we have repeated ourselves in various documents. We reference it in the small business strategy. When we are measuring that, we sometimes miss the fact that it is sometimes measured as lending by traditional banks. A lot of the gap that was left by traditional banks’ lending to SMEs falling has been…”

“Again, that is exactly why the British Business Bank has the enable guarantee and the growth guarantee. It is about bringing down the price of lending to SMEs.”

“You can see the work the British Business Bank is doing through growth guarantees in terms of trying to expand, particularly for those scale-ups, the ability to get finance. Also, the money that is going into CDFIs is of particular importance to underserved, underrepresented groups of entrepreneurs who struggle to acce…”

“That is why, for example, the British Business Bank has the start-up loans that are low-interest loans for about 85,000 enterprises, because we recognise that that is a disincentive, particularly at the early stage.”

“I would challenge that slightly. We have a stock of very resilient businesses in this country.”

“There is the five-year strategy of the British Business Bank in the investment side of the business. We are putting about £13 billion into that over the period, which we think will unlock £26 billion of private capital. Then on the lending side of things, £10 billion of additional lending is being unlocked through the …”

“It is clear that, when it comes to lending with small businesses, there are a lot of viable small business propositions that do not get the finance that they need. A lot of the time—and it is also true of the scale-up question—I would put that down to whether they have enough data for lenders to make a decision to inve…”

“That is obviously underpinning any commercial decision on lending. The question is what we as Government do about it.”

“I spend most of my time with small businesses. There are supply problems in lending for small businesses. There are also demand problems there, and the two overlap. I listened in on some business advice calls that our service was offering, and it became clear that the businesses that we were listening in on had been to…”

“That would be a matter for Treasury.”

“The £90,000 threshold is among the highest, if not the highest, in the OECD. Treasury analysis suggests that that bunching effect, where people are just below the threshold, accounts for, at most, about 0.5% of all the companies that are not registered for VAT. The final thing that I would say is that there are a varie…”

“The issue around VAT is one that is often discussed. I would say a couple of things on the idea that there is a company foregoing growth before that £90,000 threshold. First of all—again, I am slightly treading on Treasury Ministers’ toes here—”

“Yes, of course. Targets should always be a floor rather than a ceiling in terms of our ambitions.”

“As I say, it is slightly an inevitable thing of being the Minister responsible for small business. We have to work with a lot of other Departments. The matter of targets that are set will be for Treasury Ministers. Again, I would just say that there is an extraordinary amount of investment going in to try to deal with …”

“I would say that the vast majority of small businesses are desperately keen to pay what they owe, and it is, at times, far too difficult for them to do that. It is also bad news for Government, because about 60% of the tax gap relates to small businesses.”

“This would be a matter for Treasury Ministers. What I would say is that £500 million is being put into HMRC at the moment to improve that. A huge and important part of that will be moving from about three-quarters of interactions with HMRC happening in the digital space at the moment to 90% in the future. That is happe…”

“No, of course not.”