The second thing is that, according to The Guardian, the Prime Minister said yesterday that if we devalue everybody else will, and that will create a Liquidity Crisis.

This is a Crisis of Liquidity.

It is on the politicians that the problem of solving this terrible recurring Crisis of Liquidity in the monetary mechanism falls.

Consequently, the group faced a Liquidity Crisis which jeopardised the future of the 20,000 it employs in its various activities.

We can draw no comfort from that, because a Government who have presided over an increase in unemployment to 814,000 can hardly qualify for the title of "Growth Men of the Year"; neither can a Government who acknowledge that we have a Liquidity Crisis throughout the whole business economy enjoy any confidence in the regions when they produce legislation which will mean less cash available for regional development.

No doubt, they are getting some knowledge of industry because of the Liquidity Crisis in which many firms find themselves.

The danger, even before the Chancellor's statement yesterday, was not of industrial profits rising too much, not of investment outstripping our expectations, but of the private sector running into a Liquidity Crisis.

For that reason, it is very important for the Government to ensure that the private sector has adequate funds for investment and for expansion and has no risk of a Liquidity Crisis.

… Liquid assets of industrial and commercial companies late last year were at very high levels, around £10,000 million … but there is no evidence that so far companies generally are experiencing a Liquidity Crisis.

The demand for subsidised mortgages would have come at the very time when the building societies had started to repay the £500 million which they had been lent by the Government, so creating Another Liquidity Crisis.

higher than was intended by the Conservative Government, or that the introduction of the ACT surcharge are causes of the Liquidity Crisis, is absurd.

I wonder whether the description of the 1170 Liquidity Crisis in British industry by some hon. Members opposite is quite so accurate as they would have us believe.

If I may deal with the situation regarding Stibbe, the firm approached the Department's industrial development unit in July this year to discuss informally possible Section 8 aid for its Braunstone factory because the firm said it had a Liquidity Crisis.

Do they think that there is a Serious Liquidity Crisis now?

One is the proposition, which featured in the Budget speech, of relieving the Liquidity Crisis of companies.

I accept the Chancellor's advice that there is a Liquidity Crisis and that an improvement is needed immediately, but if that is so, why should he single out small businesses as being those which are not to benefit from his remission?

In case there is any doubt about the answer I gave while I was dealing with a Minor Liquidity Crisis here - I spilt my glass of water - I meant that there will be no suspension of collective responsibility.

There may be an end to the Liquidity Crisis in the sense that the imminent collapses of firms for financial reasons may have receded for the moment, but that does not mean that we are in for an era of profitability or anything like it.

My hon. Friend is right in pointing to the fact, which I outlined in my earlier statement in December, that it was the over-investment in property companies and secondary banking, in which there had been a considerable decline in the value of assets, which led to the immediate Crisis of Liquidity in the Crown Agents.

Another reason was the Liquidity Crisis which occurred at that time and which caused a shortage of working capital for industrial companies.

There may easily come about a Liquidity Crisis with this sort of borrowing, when money has to be repaid quickly.

In the later months of 1974, after I had appointed the new Chairman and constituted a board of the Crown Agents, and after Cooper and Lybrand Limited had been commissioned to examine and analyse the accounts - it should be recalled that the accounts for 1972, such as they were, were not finally available until January 1975 - it became clear that there was a serious risk of a Liquidity Crisis.

If we look at the comments made about a recent CBI survey, we se that it says:The Confederation of British Industry has started an urgent review into financial problems facing companies as a result of the lorry drivers' strike as fears grow of a Serious Liquidity Crisis.

It has a Liquidity Crisis, not an insolvency crisis.

I believe that a combination of the private banks and IMF assistance will provide the solution to the indebtedness which, as the hon. Member for Heeley said, is often a Liquidity Crisis rather than a bankruptcy in the sense that the countries concerned will never be able to repay their loans.

Small businesses face a Liquidity Crisis despite lower interest rates.

Mr. David Atkinson : To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what steps are being taken (a) nationally and (b) internationally to avert a Liquidity Crisis in the event of the millennium non-compliance of computer systems.

Although DEFRA has made that commitment, I should be grateful if it took account of what farmers have had to pay to relieve the Liquidity Crisis caused by its incompetence and reflected that more adequately in the proposed interest payments.

We need to be clear about who is responsible for monitoring liquidity and to ensure that regulation does not prevent us from dealing with a Liquidity Crisis when it arises.

The protection of the position of the depositors and shareholders of Northern Rock is of pre-eminent importance, but does the Chancellor agree that while the Liquidity Crisis of the world's largest banks continues, consideration should be given to an easing of the regulatory capital requirement under the Basle agreement?

Will we know who is in charge in a Liquidity Crisis?

It would aggravate the Current Liquidity Crisis.

Now that he is staring the consequences of his own policies in the face and does not like them, his solution is to compel the banks to carry the problem, in the middle of a Liquidity Crisis, on their balance sheets.

The UK is in the throes of a Liquidity Crisis in the wholesale markets, which is severe enough to warrant billions of pounds of taxpayer-backed intervention from the Bank of England.

The central bank can rescue a perfectly sound domestic bank if there is, as at present, a Crisis of Liquidity.

In that spirit, I have three short-term suggestions for the Minister for what could reasonably be done by the Government, as they struggle to deal with a Liquidity Crisis that could easily turn into a solvency bombshell for our banks if property defaults take hold this year and next in the way in which some fear they might - that is coming down the track.

The Liquidity Crisis, to which my noble friend Lord Patten among others referred, over which the Government have presided and of which the Banking Bill will, we all hope, play its part in preventing a recurrence, is but one half of the wider economic disaster facing our country, our businesses and our people.

They have an actual value, so when there is a Liquidity Crisis in the economy and it looks as though those permits will not be needed for a considerable time, what does any finance director say?

In the coalition's view, the credit crunch is but a minor detail when studying the public sector debt: the Liquidity Crisis that took hold of financial markets from August 2007 is just a blip; central banks having to step in to provide extra liquidity from there on is a minor detail; and the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008 is insignificant.

Does he recognise that we face not only a Crisis of Liquidity in Portugal, Greece and Ireland, which we are assisting bilaterally, but a crisis of solvency?

It is true that the Liquidity Crisis is largely the fault of Tory bankers rather than Labour politicians, but I am making a more modest argument focusing on economic development in our region.

When the bubble burst, sudden downgrades to the ratings embedded in the investment plans, mandates and capital reserve requirements automatically triggered a Liquidity Crisis which, in effect, made a bad situation much worse.

The Liquidity Crisis of 2008-09 was built on a sub-prime bubble in America and Europe and we must never allow that situation to happen again.

Nevertheless, in the absence of a central bank for the 17-nation eurozone that has real political clout or, more important still, sufficient funds to provide comprehensive cover in a Liquidity Crisis, it is regrettable that the UK is now expected to stand ready to bolster the IMF.

My hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster made the point about the Germans effectively wanting to control the eurozone, but not being prepared to accept the economic leadership that that implies by allowing the ECB to attempt to solve the Liquidity Crisis.

Osborne's proposals are not fit for the complexity of a modern 21st-century economy and, as such, they risk a Liquidity Crisis that could also trigger banking problems, a fall in GDP, a crash, or all three.