Green Party Mayoral candidate Jenny Jones, joined leafleters at Highbury and Islington tube station on Tuesday and pledged that a Green City Hall would support small businesses by ensuring that any part of the Greater London Authority group—including Transport for London—would only deal with banks that could demonstrate they were lending to London’s small businesses.
Jones said: “If London is the engine room of the UK’s economy, it is our city’s small businesses that provide the fuel for our nation’s economic recovery.
“Millions of lives are reliant on the business conducted in London’s offices, on our shop floors and on our bustling streets, and at present there has never been a greater need for government and financial institutions to support them.”
50% of Boris Johnson’s 2008 election campaign came from the hedge funds or private equity. The Bank of England’s latest quarterly trends show that lending to small businesses actually fell by 5.1% in August.
Jones said: “Because big banks have dismantled local business branches, they are no longer set-up to lend to small businesses.
“Too much brainpower in the City is focused on casino banking rather than useful business lending.”
Jones also said that Barclays provided a perfect example of the misplaced emphasis of the Mayor’s relationship with the banking sector.
Any gain for London that came from the bank’s £25million in sponsorship for cycle superhighways and the central London Cycle Hire scheme was undone within the first three years of Boris’ term with Transport for London paying out over £27m in bank charges to Barclays.
Caroline Allen, Green Party candidate for Islington in this year’s GLA elections said "Small businesses are the backbone of Islington’s economy, but working myself for a small business, I know times are hard and costs are rising. Businesses need to be able to invest, but banks care more about creating dodgy investments than supporting the real drivers of the economy."
The banknote can be found at http://bit.ly/borisbankfront and http://bit.ly/bankofborisback
More information on the Green Party’s policy towards the City of London can be found at http://bit.ly/bankingideas