My Lords, I thank both noble Lords for their broad welcome for the proposals in the Bill. I am very grateful to my noble friend Lord Razzall for setting the Bill in the context of all the other measures that we have taken to support business, particularly SMEs. The Bill contains useful and valuable measures but, as my noble friend pointed out, they are only a couple of pieces in the large jigsaw of provisions which, taken together, we believe will help to sustain the recovery and put Britain on the path to strong, prosperous growth in the years ahead.
The noble Lord, Lord Razzall, referred to the findings of the Federation of Small Businesses’ survey in this area and what small businesses said they would do with the additional resource. I thought that one of the more interesting aspects of that survey was that a substantial proportion of respondents said that they would increase wages. Given that I think both the Government and the Opposition are keen that wages at the bottom end are improved, if the measure does have the impact of increasing wages—as well as generating new jobs in other cases—that will mean that it has been effective.
The noble Lord, Lord Davies, slightly chided me on the fact that I had no support on my Benches. He will have seen support flooding in during this short debate.