Estimates Day debate: Spending and priorities of the Department for Business and Trade

On Wednesday 4 March 2026, there will be an Estimates Day Debate on the spending of the Department for Business and Trade. The topic for the debate was proposed by the Backbench Business Committee, on application from the Rt Hon Liam Byrne MP, Chair of the Business and Trade Committee. Following the debate, the House will vote on whether to approve the Supplementary Estimate for the Department of Business and Trade for 2025/26.

What are the Estimates?

One of Parliament’s longest standing functions is the consideration and authorisation of the government’s spending plans, requiring the government to obtain parliamentary consent before spending public money. Estimates, sometimes known as Supply Estimates, are the documents presented to Parliament setting out the government’s plans for spending for a given year. The process of obtaining Parliamentary approval to those plans is known as Supply. With a few specific exceptions, the government is required to obtain authority from Parliament through the supply process before it can spend public money.

For more information about the Estimates cycle, see the Library briefing Revised Government spending plans for 2025/26.

Content of an Estimate

Separate Estimates and Votes on Account are produced for each government department and published together by HM Treasury in a single volume. The key components of each Estimate are spending limits and ambits, which in each case apply to a single department for a single year only.

Spending limits

Within each Estimate, spending is divided into four distinct budgetary limits for each department, covering spending of a specific type determined by HM Treasury. Changes to the categorisation of spending require prior consultation with Parliament.

Switches of funding are not normally permitted by the Treasury from capital to resource (although exceptions, such as for health, are sometimes made), or from AME to DEL. Once Parliament has voted the limits, savings on any voted limit (DEL or AME) are not permitted to be used in support of spending under another.

Ambits

The ambit is the description of what the spending within each of the limits will be spent upon. Government departments must ensure that their ambits are accurate and, subsequently, that no spending falls outside their scope. Should it do so, it would constitute an ‘excess vote’: illegal spending outside the authority authorised by Parliament.

Detail of spending plans

Further detail of spending plans – breaking them down into a number of lines, known as subheads, within the totals above – is given within each Main and Supplementary Estimate. These breakdowns represent the government’s best estimation of planned spending within the totals at the time the Estimates are prepared, but do not constitute limits within the totals. Government departments are free to switch resources from one subhead to another, providing they do not exceed the overall spending limits, or incur expenditure beyond the scope of the ambit.

Department for Business and Trade Supplementary Estimate 2025/26

The Supplementary Estimates for 2025/26 were published by HM Treasury on 10 February 2026. Government departments are required to produce an explanatory memorandum to explain the content of each Main and Supplementary Estimate. This memorandum should compare spending plans to previous years and explain the reasons for changes proposed. Select committees currently publish memoranda on their webpages and the Scrutiny Unit uses the memoranda to prepare briefings for select committees and other Members.

The Department for Business and Trade provided an explanatory memorandum to explain the Supplementary Estimate, which was published by the Business and Trade Committee on 10 February 2026.

The Supplementary Estimate contains an increase to the Department for Business and Trade’s total managed expenditure (the total of both DEL and AME budgets) for 2025/26, of £1,531.8 million, or 31.0%. Following the uplift at the Supplementary Estimates, the Department for Business and Trade would have total managed expenditure of £6,470.6 million.

The significant uplift is predominantly allocated for funding British Steel’s continuing operation of the Scunthorpe steelworks site, following the Steel Industry (Special Measures Act) 2025. The uplift would also increase the Post Office compensation schemes, which are funded primarily through the demand-led AME budget, and to fund the British Business Bank through planned DEL spending.