Peston highlighted falling unemployment, rising output, record employment, rising real wages, house prices still climbing, record retail sales, and the stock market within a whisker of its all-time high as signs of a burgeoning UK economy.

“Things are going pretty well,” he said, “and the country is experiencing a more balanced economy than we may have hoped. However, there is not unbridled optimism. We are still too dependent upon household consumption and household debt and we must aim for a more balanced economy and more driven by business investment.”

Peston added that there were still three major risks on the horizon. These are China “which dominates the global economy and is a big accident waiting to happen”, a flatlining eurozone, “a Greek exit would have been an economic shock and it’s good that is off the scene at present”, and politics, “the risk from nationalist and extremist political parties in Europe who believe the European Union is not serving them”.

“It is also impossible,” he said, “to predict the UK general election result. It is making business planning very difficult.”

FLA chairman Nigel Clibbens (pictured below) stressed that, as a sector, asset lenders sometimes underestimate their contribution to the economy.

“We shouldn’t,” he stressed, “We’re playing a vital role in the growth of the UK. 2014 saw you, over 130 full FLA members; write almost £100 billion of new business – a record level and a very significant 25% chunk of the total £407 billion of new business lending and consumer credit in the UK last year.

“We lent £25 billion to business to finance the assets they needed to grow and create wealth – this represents around 27% of all UK investment in machinery, equipment and purchased software last year.”

Clibbens added that leasing and hire purchase came to the rescue of thousands of firms investing to grow – and was particularly popular with and important to SMEs because our credit application success rates were the highest of all the major finance options.   

“You also,” he said, “provided £74 billion of consumer credit to support family purchases like household appliances, furniture and cars, £25 billion of which was provided through motor dealerships last year to finance more than three quarters of all private new car sales in the UK. That’s almost 900,000 new vehicles you financed.  

“As you can see, we are playing a major role in growing the economy – but we want to, and can do more – among other things, now is the time to ensure asset finance plays an even bigger role in the government’s schemes to boost lending to UK business.”  

He added: “The government’s British Business Bank, there to increase the supply of funding to smaller businesses, already recognises asset finance as a market solution to a market failure in small business lending – their words, not mine.  

“We helped them develop their new asset finance funding vehicle which was launched last November, we worked with them on Round Six of the Regional Growth Fund, and we hope they will extend the Enterprise Finance Guarantee scheme to include asset finance.”