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Exporting starts at home

A short while ago I dined at a very well known Leicestershire venue that attracts people from all over the country. The dessert menu included 'a selection of French cheeses'. Nothing wrong in that you may say but ponder a little longer and you begin to wonder why specifically French cheeses. That venue is but a few miles from the source of some of the best cheeses in the world, made locally in Leicestershire. The UK more widely makes a huge range of some of the finest cheeses that money can buy.

3 June 2010

BBC News

Vince Cable will give more details of the government's plans to help UK businesses grow when he makes his first major speech on Thursday.

The business secretary is expected to outline tough proposals to get banks to increase their lending to small and medium-sized companies.

He is also due to give more details of the coalition government's aim to reduce business regulation.

It has said it will review all new rules planned by the former government.

The business department claimed that the cost of implementing all regulation in the pipeline would be £5bn in this financial year and £19bn after that.

"We must move away from the view that the only way to solve problems is to regulate," Mr Cable said on Wednesday.

Mr Cable said the review of regulation was one measure to encourage economic growth.

"There are all sorts of ways we can act without sloshing around government money," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

He said it was also crucial that banks, especially those who have received taxpayer support, lend to businesses to support the economic recovery.

Mr Cable said that part of his new job would be, along with Chancellor George Osborne, talking to the banks "to make absolutely sure that they do what they have been funded to do".

He is also expected to use his speech to reiterate the government's plan to bring private capital into the Royal Mail.