The chief executive of one of the banks signed up to a new £20bn credit easing scheme to help small companies has said that this would make credit cheaper for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) that would already get funding from the banks, but it would not fund new companies.

Phillip Monks, chief executive of Aldermore bank, told the Today programme's Simon Jack that "the risk that we take is not going to be subsidised by the government" so while it is a "step in the right direction in freeing up money for SMEs," the volume of money available to SME's needed to be stimulated.

Graeme Fisher, head of policy, at the Federation of Small Businesses, agreed, adding that "this is about a quantity issue and this form of credit easing won't address that".

Mr Fisher added that this plan was "not going to be a game changer" and said that "we need to look more long term at how the banking sector is structured".

"We need to go much further," he said.

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