UK Start-up Companies

Baroness Kingsmill Excerpts

Wednesday 28th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lloyd of Effra (Lab)]

The evidence from HMRC’s 2022 evaluation shows that 75% of enterprise investment scheme companies strongly agreed that finance led their company to grow. As the noble Lord is aware, in the Budget the Government introduced an entrepreneurship tax package to support innovative young companies, doubling the eligibility of the EIS. At the same time, the Treasury is running a call for evidence to gather evidence on how well existing support is working, including the EIS, and on options for further support. The questions that the noble Lord asked will be addressed, at least in part, by the consultation that the Treasury is launching now.

[Baroness Kingsmill (Lab)]

My Lords, I too have been very much involved in start ups, including chairing a fintech. At the moment, the real issue for start-ups is scalability. I wonder what the Government can do to assist companies and the brilliant entrepreneurs that we produce in this country in scaling up their businesses.

[Baroness Lloyd of Effra (Lab)]

My noble friend raises the equally important point that, as well as supporting start-ups, we need to support scale-ups. One initiative that the Government have taken is the entrepreneurship prospectus, which takes action on four important areas that create the ecosystem for companies not only to establish themselves but to thrive. That includes: on R&D, focusing public research firepower on priority sectors; changing the procurement rules and approach so that the Government are a better customer for innovative businesses, which is something that scale-ups often raise with us; the changes to tax reliefs, which I mentioned; and strengthening the ability of public finance institutions to invest at series B and beyond.