Category Archives: Government

Banking, Britain, Economic, Financial Markets, Government

Lending to small and medium sized firms on course to hit a 7-year low…

BANK LENDING

Bank lending to businesses is projected to slump to its lowest level for seven years, a report from Ernst & Young has warned.

UK banks will lend £422 billion to firms this year – the lowest amount since 2006. This is well below the £575 billion lent in 2008 before the financial crisis.

The figures from the Ernst & Young Item Club underline the crisis facing many companies as banks starve them of the funds they need to grow and prosper. The problem poses a serious threat to the economic recovery.

The Item Club report warns that lending will not return to its pre-recession peak until 2017.

Financial analysts fear small and medium sized firms are struggling to get the funds they need to grow, or by taking on staff that will be needed to drive the economy.

The further fall in lending this year will disappoint officials at both the Treasury and the Bank of England, who launched the £80 billion Funding for Lending scheme last summer.

This scheme was intended to increase the flow of cheap loans for households and businesses.

While there is evidence that mortgage lending is increasing, particularly to first-time buyers, there is little to suggest that small firms are getting access to the money they urgently need.

The Item Club report also showed that around £200 million was lent last year to small and medium-sized enterprises, or SMEs, through ‘peer to peer’ lending – which allows people to lend directly to businesses.

An economic adviser to the Item Club, said:

… We expect peer to peer lending to grow rapidly in the next few years as demand for funding from SMEs outstrips supply from the banks.

The report does predict, though, that bank lending will pick up as the economy recovers, rising to £452 billion next year, £497 billion in 2015, £545 billion in 2016 and £602 billion in 2017.

A spokesperson for the accountancy firm Ernst & Young, said:

… Corporate lending won’t increase enough in 2013 to compensate for the dire first half of the year. We expect it to pick up in 2014, raising hopes that UK companies may invest some of the cash back into the wider economy.

… The banks should be able to increase their credit supply – regulation permitting.

And, despite the recent pick-up in the economy interest rates look set to remain flat lined. The Bank of England’s monetary policy committee, which will meet on Thursday, is widely expected to peg interest rates at 0.5 per cent for a 54th month in a row.

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Britain, Government, Libya, Scotland, United States

Megrahi’s release linked to £400m arms deal. Revelations continue to emerge…

THE LOCKERBIE BOMBER: ABDELBASET AL MEGRAHI

The release of the Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbaset Al Megrahi, was linked to a £400 million arms deal with Libya, according to secret documents.

Following disclosures, obtained under Freedom of Information laws, the documents show ‘reprehensible’ connections between the Labour government that aimed to boost business and freeing the man convicted of Britain’s worst terrorist atrocity.

In an email communication between the then UK ambassador in Tripoli to the former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, further details have emerged of how a prisoner transfer agreement was aimed to be signed once Libya had fulfilled its promises to buy an air defence system.

At the time of Megrahi’s release in 2009, Labour’s government under Gordon Brown insisted there was no link to ‘blood money’ trade deals with Colonel Gaddafi.

Megrahi, a Libyan, was convicted under Scots Law of killing 270 people by blowing up a US airliner over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in December 1988. He was sent home early from Greenock prison on compassionate grounds because he had terminal prostate cancer. He died last year. Ministers have always insisted that his release from prison was a decision taken solely by the Scottish Government.

The email was sent by Sir Vincent Fean, then the UK’s most senior diplomat in Libya, to Mr Blair, ahead of his visit to Gaddafi in June 2008. Mr Blair, who quit Downing Street a year earlier, was being updated on the UK’s ongoing relations with the Libyan dictator.

Prior to this, Mr Blair met Gaddafi and his Prime Minister Al-Baghdadi Ali al-Mahmoudi in his infamous visit to Sirte in a desert tent. The meeting thrashed out a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on prisoner transfers just before BP announced the firm was investing £545 million to search for oil reserves in Libya believed to be worth £13 billion.

But according to the email, Mr Blair and Baghdadi agreed Libya would buy a missile defence system from MBDA, part-owned by BAE Systems. When he returned in June 2008 the Government appeared to see a chance for him to push for the arms deal to be sealed.

Sir Vincent Fean wrote:

… There is one bilateral issue which I hope TB (Tony Blair) can raise, as a legacy issue. On 29 May 07 in Sirte, he and Libya’s PM agreed that Libya would buy an air defence system (Jernas) from the UK (MBDA).

… One year on, MBDA are now back in Tripoli aiming to agree and sign the contract now – worth £400 million, and up to 2,000 jobs in the UK. We think we have Col Q’s (Gaddafi’s) goodwill for this contract. This issue can also be raised with Libya’s PM. It was PM Baghdadi who told the media on 29 May 07 that Libya would buy British.

… Linked (by Libya) is the issue of the 4 bilateral justice agreements about which TB signed an MoU with Baghdadi on 29 May. The MoU says they will be negotiated within the year: they have been. They are all ready for signature in London as soon as Libya fulfils its promise on Jernas.

The prisoner transfer agreement was signed in November 2008.

Lord Mandelson, the Business Secretary in Labour’s Government at the time of Megrahi’s release, said then it was ‘offensive’ to suggest it was linked to improving commercial relations with Libya.

On Sunday, Mandleson said:

… I was not aware of the correspondence covered in the FOI request.

A statement from Mr Blair’s side said the email did not show the UK government was trying to link the defence deal and Megrahi. A spokesperson for Mr Blair, said:

… Actually it shows the opposite – that any linkage was from the Libyan side. As far as we’re aware there was no linkage on the UK side. What the email in fact shows is that, consistent with what we have always said, it was made clear to the then Libyan leader that the release of Megrahi was a matter for Scotland. Of course the Libyans, as they always did, raised Megrahi.

MBDA says the Libyans never signed the arms deal.

But what is startling is the continuing emergence of revelations about the squalid relationship between the Blair government and Colonel Gaddafi.

First we learned of the willingness of the former British prime minister to fawn over an international terrorist as part of a charm offensive to win lucrative oil contracts.

With disclosures released under Freedom of Information, we now discover the grubby deal which allowed the only man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing to be freed early from a Scottish prison was linked to Libya agreeing to buy £400 million of British arms.

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European Union, Government, Health, Medical, Research, Science

New European Laws could force drug companies to publish contentious research…

Drug companies have only ever released small amounts of their research data from clinical trials, with critics claiming that negative results are only half as likely to be published.

Drug companies have only ever released small amounts of their research data from clinical trials, with critics claiming that negative results are only half as likely to be published.

SHARING RESULTS OF CLINICAL TRIALS

Under new European laws, pharmaceutical companies could be forced to publish secret research into how drugs are created. This could potentially lead to drug companies having to disclose information about dangerous and unknown side-effects of many drugs.

The rules would mean that some of the world’s most powerful pharmaceutical companies would have to share the results of clinical trials which could then be analysed by independent scientists.

Analysts say that the move will also reveal if patients have been fooled by the use of placebos or drugs that have not been scientifically proven to work.

Drug companies have only ever released small amounts of their research data from clinical trials, with critics claiming that spurious and negative results are only half as likely to be published.

The disclosure rules being drawn up by the European Medicines Agency, an EU body, have been met with stiff resistance from pharmaceutical companies. They claim that some of their information might be misinterpreted, which might spark significant health scare’ around the use of particular drugs.

In just the last three years, 26 drug companies have racked up financial fines amounting to more than £7 billion for acting dishonestly.

GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), Britain’s largest pharmaceutical company, announced earlier this year that it would support a move for such laws by publishing the results and data of all its clinical trials.

The move and announcement by GSK followed fierce criticism of the company after it was given a £1.9 billion fine in the United States last year, in part for withholding safety data about Avandria, its best-selling and highly profitable diabetes drug.

A leaked e-mail message from the head of a leading pharmaceutical industry body to company executives revealed that ‘patient groups’ would be used in an attempt to block legislative amendments to the clinical trials directive.

The e-mail, first seen by the Guardian, a London based broadsheet newspaper, was sent by the director-general of the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations, Richard Bergström, to the directors and legal departments at companies including Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline.

In his message, Mr Bergström says that patient groups will be ‘mobilised’ to express concerns about…

… the risk to public health by non-scientific re-use of data.

Campaigners have hit back and have said that the groups – which are often funded by the companies themselves – are a ‘front for the pharmaceutical industry’.

Health Action International, a campaign group, said it was ironic that such a transparency initiative being promoted by the pharmaceutical industry was now ready to use patient organisations to fight their corner. The health lobby group says that patient groups in the pay of the pharmaceutical industry will now go into battle for them, and has suggested there is a clear ‘hidden agenda’. In a statement the group said:

… Patient groups get traction because they are assumed to represent the voice of the suffering. But industry uses them to say we’re not going to get innovative medicines if the industry is deterred from investing by having to be transparent about their clinical trials.

 

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