Business of the House

Brandon Lewis Excerpts

Thursday 24th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

The Government are very anxious to drive down perinatal and antenatal mortality and we have taken a number of measures already to promote public health. The Health and Social Care Bill, which is now going through the House, will, I hope, make some progress in that direction. I will bring the hon. Gentleman’s suggestion to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health and ask whether there is more we can do to diminish the number of babies who are born damaged or, sadly, die because of excess alcohol consumption by their mother.

[Brandon Lewis (Great Yarmouth) (Con)]

Through the all-party parliamentary group for local growth, enterprise zones and local enterprise partnerships, it is clear that the organisations involved in enterprise zones understand the importance of opportunities for small and medium-sized enterprises in enterprise zones. Seajacks in Great Yarmouth is likely to be the first organisation to go into an enterprise zone, highlighting how important SMEs can be for growth and job creation. May we have a debate in the Chamber on the importance of SMEs, particularly with reference to opportunities in enterprise zones?

[Sir George Young]

I believe that my hon. Friend is the chairman of the all-party group and I commend him for his activity in that regard. I hope there will be an opportunity when we debate the economy to say a little more about SMEs. We have extended the level of small business rate relief for two years. We have a new fund of enterprise capital funds, which I hope will help, and there is also entrepreneur’s relief and other initiatives such as the enterprise finance guarantee, all of which I hope will help SMEs to grow and employ more people.