Oral Answers to Questions Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Business and Trade
Caroline Voaden
Main Page: Caroline Voaden (Liberal Democrat - South Devon)Department Debates - View all Caroline Voaden's debates with the Department for Business and Trade
(2 days, 19 hours ago)
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Gareth Thomas
The hon. Gentleman will not be surprised to know that we receive representations on the VAT threshold from a number of small businesses, and we ensure that they are heard by Treasury colleagues. He will recognise that VAT raises a significant sum of money for the public finances, and given the mess that we inherited, we had to take some difficult decisions about those public finances to protect funding for hospitals in his constituency, and indeed other public services across the country.
Caroline Voaden (South Devon) (LD)
Recently imposed general product safety regulations have added yet another layer of cost and complexity to exports to the European Union. That is particularly hitting entrepreneurs and microbusinesses, many of which have had to end exports to their EU customers. Did the Department have any discussions with its EU counterparts during recent trade negotiations about exempting small and microbusinesses from those rules? If not, is it doing any work to support small businesses in particular, which have had to end exports to EU customers because of the new regulations?