fighting temeraire hangs. the purpose of design features like these is not simply to make the banknotes beautiful but also to strengthen their security. the new £20 will be our most secure note yet, featuring several innovative elements. for example, rather than having a single foil element – the turner contemporary in blue – there is an additional foil in a second colour : the margate lighthouse in gold. and there is a second transparent element in the bottom corner of the note, inspired by the windows of tintern abbey, which was a popular tourist spot in turner ’ s times and which he memorialised in another of his great watercolours in 1794. these security features are made possible by printing the new £20 on polymer, rather than paper. polymer banknotes also remain in good condition for longer, meaning the new £20 will be safer, cleaner and stronger. the self - portrait is currently on display in tate britain, and the fighting temeraire can been seen in the national gallery. p. ackroyd, turner ( vintage, 2006 ) page 136. see : http : / / news. bbc. co. uk / 1 / hi / entertainment / 4214824. stm. all speeches are available online at www. bankofengland. co. uk / news / speeches the varied colour of our banknotes also plays an important role in making the nation ’ s money as inclusive as possible. features like the differing colour palettes, differing sizes and raised print enable those who are visually impaired to recognise different notes. as with the new polymer £10, the new £20 will also include a tactile feature – a series of raised dots in the upper left - hand corner – to improve accessibility further. conclusion banknotes are meagre pieces of paper – or more accurately polymer – of no intrinsic value that serve vital economic functions. they facilitate trade. they store value. they act as a unit of account. as the man whom turner will replace on the £20 adam smith observed, banknotes may be mere barren tokens but they are the “ universal instrument of commerce ”. 5 and money serves as a collective memory for a country and its people ; it has cultural value as well as economic. as the new turner £20 testifies, money can be a work of art in everyone ’ s pocket. far from being “ barren ”, 6 our banknotes celebrate uk ’ s heritage, salute its culture and testify to the great achievements of its most notable citizens. that

relatively positive about the investment outlook and this is consistent with investment intentions indicated by other business surveys. 9 these indications of rising business investment also suggest that constraints in the banking sector – which are making it more difficult for many small and medium sized companies to obtain finance – are not acting as a serious obstacle to a recovery in business investment. the third positive development for the supply - side of the uk economy following the recession is the low level of company failures. company failure rates are normally pushed up by a recession and in the early 1990s the liquidation rate peaked at close to 3 % of the number of uk companies. however, as chart 5 shows, the failure rate of businesses has remained below 1 % in this recession and has recently turned down as the economy has begun to recover. even adjusting for changes in the legal framework for insolvencies in the mid - 2000s, the rate of company liquidation is lower than in the last recession and the increase during the recession has been much lower than expected when the recession first hit. with the pressures on the banks following the financial crisis, we might have expected the opposite result. if the banks had quickly sought to realise value from bad loans made in the global credit boom, we might have seen more business failures. one reason that this has not happened is because of government interventions in the banking sector which have encouraged uk banks to sustain lending to companies from which they might otherwise have withdrawn support. another mitigating factor against business failures in the recent downturn has been the willingness of the government to allow greater flexibility for companies in the bank of england agents ’ report for november shows investment intentions back to the level last recorded in late 2007 and early 2008, before the recession. for more details, see the bank of england website : http : / / www. bankofengland. co. uk / publications / agentssummary / agsum10nov. pdf. the cbi industrial trends survey shows that in manufacturing industry investment intentions are the strongest recorded since 1997. making tax payments to ease cash flow constraints. and a further supporting influence has been the relative strength of company cash flows i commented on earlier. the flip side of the fact that more companies have survived the recent recession is that there has been a fall - off in measured productivity. instead of slack being created in the labour market through company failures and job losses, there is the possibility that more spare capacity has been retained within companies which have survived the recession – particularly in the services sector, which accounts for the