Covid-19: Supply Chains

Baroness Neville-Rolfe Excerpts

Monday 22nd June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist]

The noble Lord will be aware that the United Kingdom was, in 2013, the first country to produce a national action plan to respond to the guiding principles on the international treaty on human rights. The UK is responding strongly and bilaterally to support companies and supply chains abroad through financial and advisory support. For example, CDC, the UK’s bilateral development finance institution, is maintaining investments to protect a strongly countercyclical response at this time so as to help companies access finance and protect supply chains and jobs overseas.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con) [V]]

But, on another tack, many were struck by how enterprise and private investment helped to secure a speedy recovery in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. What steps are the Government planning to remove existing barriers to private enterprise and to encourage new private investment in response to the coronavirus crisis, in the supply chain and elsewhere?

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist]

As always, my noble friend displays her credentials as a champion for business. This is a Government who consistently aim to create a strong environment for enterprise, but business needs three things: it needs the markets, and in that regard the Government continually announce measures that will increase confidence in the economy as we move forward through the pandemic; it needs finance—the British Business Bank, a centre of excellence for SME finance, administers the new Future Fund announced in May, which is securing match funding for the private sector to new businesses; and it needs increased productivity through increasing use of technology, as advocated by the Mayhew report, of which my noble friend will be aware, and championed by B4 Business, a charity financially supported by government funds. Only by working on all three fronts can we create the environment in which new small businesses will thrive.