Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling last night began piling the pressure on British banks to start lending again, telling them to honour the commitments they made as part of the £37 billion bailout.

Government directors on the boards of the three banks that the taxpayer has helped to recapitalise will use their influence to ensure that they make lending to British individuals and businesses their top priority, officials disclosed.

The Times understands that Mr Brown regards the current reluctance of the banks to lend, after a period when they have been riskily liberal in handing out loans, to be the greatest threat to recovery from the recession.

The Government will insist, as a shareholder in the Royal Bank of Scotland, HBOS and Lloyds TSB, that they carry out their agreements to make ample lending available through mortgages and loans to small companies.

The banks will shortly publish their prospectuses for raising new capital. The Government will underwrite the fundraising. Ministers are saying that while the Government will not exercise control of the day-to-day business of the banks, its directors on the boards will use their influence to see that the agreements are implemented.

The calculation appears to be that if the three part-nationalised banks start lending properly again, rivals will follow suit or lose business.

Mr Brown and Mr Darling yesterday welcomed a commitment by the European Investment Bank (EIB) to make £4 billion available to provide finance to companies in the UK. However, they were criticised by MPs on all sides for failing to guarantee that money would be passed on by British banks.

Small businesses also gave warning that they may not receive anything near the loans that the Government has promised will come from the EIB. John Wright, chairman of the Federation of Small Businesses, told a meeting that despite the promises from the Government and banks, “the evidence contradicts the good intentions”.

Mr Wright said that small businesses were still finding it hard to borrow and were facing punitive charges despite creation of a forum set up by the Government to help to alleviate the cash problems they face.

Philippe Maystadt, president of the EIB, told the same meeting, at Guildhall in London, that UK banks do not take very much of the money that is already available through the not-for-profit European bank.

Mr Maystadt said that of the €5.2 billion (£4 billion) that was lent by the EIB to small companies through national banks last year, the UK took only €100 million. He said that only one of the four big high street banks – Barclays – works with the EIB on the loans, along with Alliance & Leicester and Close Brothers.

The Forum of Private Business provided further evidence that banks did not yet seem to be responding to the conditions of the UK Government’s £37 billion bailout, which stipulated that they had to lend to small businesses at the levels they lent at last year.

The forum highlighted the plight of one of its members, whose application to increase a mortgage to develop a site was turned down because its bank said that it was not lending for property development at that time.

After talks in Downing Street with Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, Mr Brown said that it was now up to the banks in Britain to honour their commitments.

“Having recapitalised the banks, we must ensure that the money is used to sustain credit lines on normal terms to solvent businesses,” he said. “I urge banks not to change the terms and charges for existing lending to small and medium-sized enterprises.”

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