Business, Innovation and Skills – in the House of Commons at 10:30 am on 4 March 2010.
Desmond Swayne
Parliamentary Private Secretary To the Leader of the Opposition
10:30,
4 March 2010
What steps he is taking to increase the level of access to credit by small and medium-sized enterprises.
Ian Lucas
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Business, Innovation and Skills) (Business and Regulatory Reform)
We have a number of targeted interventions working to ensure access to finance for small and medium-sized businesses. I have already given the House figures concerning the enterprise finance guarantee, which is one example of those interventions.
Desmond Swayne
Parliamentary Private Secretary To the Leader of the Opposition
The statements from the Dispatch Box are quite at variance with the experience of small businesses on the ground. Is it not clear that the second banking bail-out failed in its attempt to extend bank lending to business?
Ian Lucas
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Business, Innovation and Skills) (Business and Regulatory Reform)
The experience on the ground is that we are seeing signs of increasing investment in business and of businesses beginning to recover as consumer demand develops. Consumer demand is extremely important. That is why it is vital that we do not reach the levels of unemployment in this country that we saw on two occasions under the last Tory Government.
If you've ever seen inside the Commons, you'll notice a large table in the middle - upon this table is a box, known as the dispatch box. When members of the Cabinet or Shadow Cabinet address the house, they speak from the dispatch box. There is a dispatch box for the government and for the opposition. Ministers and Shadow Ministers speak to the house from these boxes.
The political party system in the English-speaking world evolved in the 17th century, during the fight over the ascension of James the Second to the Throne. James was a Catholic and a Stuart. Those who argued for Parliamentary supremacy were called Whigs, after a Scottish word whiggamore, meaning "horse-driver," applied to Protestant rebels. It was meant as an insult.
They were opposed by Tories, from the Irish word toraidhe (literally, "pursuer," but commonly applied to highwaymen and cow thieves). It was used — obviously derisively — to refer to those who supported the Crown.
By the mid 1700s, the words Tory and Whig were commonly used to describe two political groupings. Tories supported the Church of England, the Crown, and the country gentry, while Whigs supported the rights of religious dissent and the rising industrial bourgeoisie. In the 19th century, Whigs became Liberals; Tories became Conservatives.
