Mr. Nick Ashmore:

On the point about bringing the next scheme to market, I appreciate it seemed like more than a year since the agrischeme came to market, but in that time we have sought to build on that and learn the lessons from that scheme, but also bring forward the Brexit support loan scheme, which is a valuable support, especially for food companies and food processing companies. Given the potential impact of Brexit on their businesses, we felt in conjunction with the Departments that we work with that there was a real sense of urgency to get that into the market. That was launched at the end of March, and it still took a few months for one of the banks to be actively in the market after that. It has really only just settled in and is in there now. That frees up the capacity for us to start talking to the institutions and start delivering the next scheme. It is a serial process that means we cannot always bring a number of things or something to market quite as quickly as we would like. It is also important we take the time to get as much resource out of Europe as part of these schemes. We have been quite successful in that. The European Commission contributed to the agrischeme in two different ways. It contributed strongly to the Brexit support loan scheme, and we expect there will be a strong European contribution to the next scheme also.

With regard to the recent article about the use of lower-cost SBCI liquidity by the banks, when the SBCI was first set up it addressed the market failure where banks could not access low-cost long-term liquidity support to support their SME-lending. The market has evolved and, due to the massive amount of quantitative easing that has taken place, it is a much more liquid market now for bank credit. At the point where it became cheaper for the banks to borrow in the market than it was to borrow from the SBCI, which is using a degree of Government resource to make that available, certainly in terms of the Government's balance sheet, it made no sense to continue that activity. We continue to use that sort of liquidity to support non-bank institutions, at least two of which support farmers through low-cost access to leasing, hire purchase and finance to purchase equipment. We continue to use that source of support and we use it instead of supporting the banks' delivery of loans to support non-banks which can then compete with the banks. It is on a different scale and it is a different type of institution but we continue to look for non-banks to be able to use that funding.

In response to that change in circumstances, the SBCI has sought to evolve as rapidly and as quickly as it can. We have been moving into the risk-sharing area for a number of years and, as has been seen, we have already brought forward two major schemes. We also took over the administration and operation of the original credit guarantee scheme, which was brought forward by the Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation, and it is also delivered through the banks. It is there as a backstop for businesses that are turned down for credit, where they can then look to the credit guarantee scheme to bolster their credit application.