Start-up Loans

Debate between Chris Heaton-Harris and Matt Hancock

Wednesday 20th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Hancock]

It is terrific to hear directly from Mr Martin’s MP, who is such a champion of Falmouth and Truro, about the effect that the loan has had on him. Similar stories abound from all 10,000 of those who have received the loans.

[Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)]

Start-up loans are helping many people to set up their own small businesses. We are coming up to small business Saturday, which is on 7 December. Mr Speaker, you are welcome to come to my networking event for small businesses at the iCon centre in Daventry on that morning and I will happily buy you a coffee. Will the Minister say how important it is to celebrate small businesses on small business Saturday?

[Matthew Hancock]

I love small businesses. I come from a small business background. Government Members have demonstrated their commitment to growing small businesses and doing everything they can to support them. To show that support, I urge everyone to get out there on 7 December—small business Saturday—to buy something from small businesses and to tweet about it, so the whole world knows how much we support small and growing businesses.

Interest Rate Swap Products

Debate between Chris Heaton-Harris and Matt Hancock

Thursday 21st June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

I did not know that, and I thank my hon. Friend for raising it.

Lloyds bank has denied any wrongdoing whatever, claiming that the margin reduction was not necessary for the duration of the swap, and it hides behind the small print that says, as we heard earlier, that any advice given was not, in fact, “advice”.

[Matthew Hancock (West Suffolk) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that his constituency case is like that of many across the country in that the question of duration is the problem? A very successful business in my constituency was offered a loan of five years and a swap of 10 years; the mismatch between the two time periods is likely to cause a huge jump in costs as the loan runs out in a few months’ time, with five further years of swap, which the company did not need, remaining to match off the initial loan.

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

My hon. Friend is right. My constituents are in exactly the same position.

There is, at least, provision for my constituents to break the swap, but doing so would cost them a cool £1 million. They have complained to the financial services ombudsman, asking for compensation and asking for the original swap margin to be reinstated at its 2006 level or, alternatively, for the swap to be torn up so that they can keep their existing margin. They have been advised that the 2008 swap was mis-sold and inappropriate for their business, and they are discussing the details of that with the financial services ombudsman.

In 2008 Lloyds sold another of my constituents, Phillip Derbyshire, an enhanced collar—or, as it was described by my hon. Friend the Member for Wyre Forest (Mark Garnier), an enhanced noose. It has cost him £1.275 million, about 75% of his pension pool. He is 64 years old. Both the FSO and the Financial Services Authority are unable to assist him, and Lloyds claims that there has been no wrongdoing. My constituent claims that the circumstances of sale were

“tantamount to a sting operation under duress”,

and I completely believe him.