13:55 Mr William Bain (Glasgow North East) (Lab)

Speaking with Gaia-Wind threw up some issues that many small businesses across the country still experience. The first is access to finance. According to the Bank of England’s most recent inflation report, SME lending is still falling. It has fallen every year during this Parliament, despite initiatives such as funding for lending. It illustrates the need for powerful structural reform of our banking sector and for a British investment bank that can provide finance to major infrastructure projects and strategically important industries in our economy. The green investment bank needs more powers to drive an increase in green investment that will benefit the entire economy and help us show the global leadership that we should be showing in decarbonising our energy supply by 2030.

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