PM pledges business and home loan aid

The prime minister has promised new plans to speed-up bank lending to businesses and homebuyers.

Gordon Brown told MPs on Monday that chancellor Alistair Darling will shortly announce "new measures to speed-up the resumption of lending to businesses and homeowners".

Amid complaints that banks are not passing on government liquidity funds and low interest rates to small businesses, Brown said ministers would take action to ensure that good firms do not go to the wall.

The measures would come on top of the Treasury's loan guarantee scheme, export credits and deferral of tax, he argued.

And he said that there would also be a £400m package of measures to help up to 18,000 first time buyers get their "first rung on the housing ladder".

Housing minister Margaret Beckett would announce money that would "build on our help with mortgages to avoid repossessions will help up to 18,000 first time buyers draw on the home shared equity scheme to get their first rung on the housing ladder", Brown said.

This amounted to "real help to families and businesses now - only possible because we are prepared to make a fiscal stimulus in the economy", he claimed.