Small Business Council

3. What steps her Department is taking to support small and medium-sized enterprises through the Small Business Council.

On 1 February, the Government reaffirmed our commitment to all the UK’s 5.5 million small businesses with the creation of the new Small Business Council, which is looking at key areas, such as improving business support, access to finance, support and advice, and breaking down barriers, including barriers to female entrepreneurship.

As chair of the women and enterprise all-party parliamentary group, it has been fantastic to see the boom in female-led businesses over the past few years. We now want to see consideration of how some of them can grow. Can the Minister set out how the new Small Business Council can help them to do that?

I thank my hon. Friend for his question and for all he does for women in entrepreneurship and on the APPG, on which he has worked for many years. The Small Business Council has excellent entrepreneurs on it, such as Emma Heal from Lucky Saint and Julianne Ponan from Creative Nature, who we rely on for expert advice. We also have the investing in women taskforce, which has helped to increase the number of female entrepreneur businesses from 56,000 in 2018 to 150,000 in 2022. The investing in women code has 240 signatories. We are keen to do more and to work alongside my hon. Friend to ensure that the world of entrepreneurship is as friendly as possible to female entrepreneurs.

Will the Minister ask the Small Business Council to wake up to the opportunities in the hydrogen sector, not only in terms of the engineering that supplies that sector, the coming replacement of batteries and all that transportation stuff, but in the infrastructure of our country? We have great engineering that is ready to go with a hydrogen future. When will he wake up to that opportunity?

We already have woken up to that opportunity. As the hon. Gentleman knows, we have great opportunities in hydrogen in Teesside and in Yorkshire, with the Humber hydrogen cluster. It is something we are keen to support as a Government, and I would appreciate it if he offered his support, too.

I call the shadow Minister.

The perfect storm of rising borrowing, rent and labour costs is continuing to cripple businesses, and the UK small business index fell 78 points last December, according to Xero Small Business Insights, to the lowest reading since the middle of the pandemic in August 2020. The Government have had 14 years to tackle the barriers facing SMEs. What specifically will the Small Business Council do, and what will Ministers do to halt the alarming trend of more businesses closing than opening?

I am sorry that the shadow Minister is so pessimistic about the world of business. We have spoken at events together many times, and she hears the mood in those audiences, which is far more positive than she sets out. We are active in many areas, as she knows. At the event we both spoke at this week, I talked about access to finance, support and advice, and removing barriers. Access to finance has been key, with £1 billion of Start Up loans having been made to 100,000 businesses. If she listened to the Budget yesterday, she will have heard about the rise in the VAT threshold and the growth guarantee scheme. There are many opportunities for small businesses. We will have 200,000 more workers coming back into the workplace, tackling another barrier for businesses. Get with the programme; it is much more exciting than she thinks.