He said the scale of the job meant that the department had encouraged local councils to take on part of the job of clearing paths and had introduced a scheme to indemnify councils against public liability claims.
The other question which the Bank of England and Treasury were really touchy about is whether the Treasury - or taxpayers - will indemnify the Bank against the risks it is running with the lending scheme.
Microsoft is incensed that Google is giving away Android, claiming that Google has not cleared Microsoft patents utilized by Android and is unable to indemnify Google customers against intellectual property suits, presumably to be brought by Microsoft.
Is there any likelihood however that George Osborne and the Treasury would indemnify the Bank of England and all the banks against losses on a certain portion of their business lending, so that the banks could lend to younger and more ambitious companies without exposing their owners to the losses?