Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, if he will conduct an inquiry into the effect on the viability of small to medium sized business of banks’ efforts to improve their own capital ratios.

The Government established an independent Financial Policy Committee (FPC) to identify, monitor and take action to remove or reduce systemic risks with a view to protecting and enhancing the resilience of the UK financial system. In March 2017 the FPC judged the appropriate Tier 1 capital requirement for the UK banking system, in aggregate and net of any countercyclical capital buffer, to be 13.5% of risk-weighted assets, as currently measured. The FPC’s judgement of the appropriate level of capital for the banking system was calibrated such that banks could absorb the cumulative losses in historical stress episodes and continue to provide essential services to the real economy.

The Government is supporting lending to SMEs in a variety of ways, including: establishing the British Business Bank to make finance markets work better for small businesses; supporting challenger banks; introducing a bespoke regime for peer-to-peer lending; and structural interventions such as the bank referral scheme and the SME credit data sharing scheme.