Crowdfunding and the FCA
Debate between Meg Hillier and Julian Huppert(10 years, 4 months ago)
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Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)
Thank you for calling me to speak, Mr Chope. I will try to be brief. I congratulate the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) on securing this important debate. I also pay tribute to my noble Friend Baroness Susan Kramer, who did a lot of work in this area before her elevation to a ministerial role, which has somewhat curtailed it.
The sector is huge; we can read about just how big it is in the excellent “The Rise of Future Finance: The UK Alternative Finance Benchmarking Report”. I am delighted that Cambridge was able to play a part in that; £939 million is a large sum of money. The sector is also incredibly varied. In my constituency, for example, SyndicateRoom is doing equity crowdfunding, and the Future Business Centre is using social impact bonds to build an entire building for social enterprises. RealVNC, a software company, was set up though merchandising; it sold products with its logo on to get the money to build a better product. There is also Frontier Developments and its game, “Elite: Dangerous”. Those are all crowdfunded. The area is so varied that there is a huge challenge for regulation.
The sector must be regulated to avoid problems—none of us wants to hear the story of the granny who loses all her savings on something like that—but we must ensure that the regulation is not disproportionate. We must ensure that we have principles regulation, not firm tracks that lock everyone down and kill off the excitement, as the hon. Member for Huddersfield said. That is my aim.
The Government are supportive; I will finish with a quote from my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills in response to the excellent benchmarking report, “The Rise of Future Finance”:
“Alternative finance is playing an increasingly important role in helping businesses access the finance they need to grow and contribute to the economy.”
Let us ensure that that can continue.
Cycling
Debate between Meg Hillier and Julian Huppert(10 years, 7 months ago)
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Dr Huppert
Let me make a bit more progress and then I will give way.
We spoke to a wide range of people—not only cycling organisations, which I thank for their assistance throughout the process, but the police, the freight industry, Living Streets, the president of the Automobile Association, and many others. I thank them all, and particularly those parliamentarians from both Houses who served on the panel, many of whom are here today, and Adam Coffman, who co-ordinated the entire process. There were hundreds of suggestions for recommendations, and those and more analysis can be found in the companion report by Professor Phil Goodwin, together with transcripts of the entire session.
Currently, only about 2% of trips are made by bike—a tiny fraction, well below the levels found in many countries. A huge range of short trips that could easily be walked or cycled are driven. That is why we set a long-term ambition to try to increase that from 2% to 10% by 2025 and to 25% by 2050. That is entirely do-able and still below what the Dutch, for example, manage to achieve.
Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
As the hon. Gentleman highlights, very few people cycle, but in my borough of Hackney we have a far higher percentage—more than 10% of people regularly cycle. Does he agree that that is testament to what can be done with forward thinking, good planning and a political will to achieve a change?
Dr Huppert
I thank the hon. Lady for her comment and for her work on the report. She is absolutely right that there are exemplars. In my constituency of Cambridge, about a third of trips are now made by bike. We are hoping to increase that to 40% with the money that has been given by the Government through the ambition grant. Some places are showing that they can do this, and the rest of the country can as well.