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Written Question
Companies: Investment
Thursday 30th October 2025

Asked by: Julia Lopez (Conservative - Hornchurch and Upminster)

Question to the Department for Business and Trade:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, if he will make an assessment with the Chancellor of the Exchequer of the potential merits of creating a dedicated scale-up investment scheme.

Answered by Blair McDougall - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade)

The Chancellor and Secretary of State wrote on 20 October to the British Business Bank, setting the Bank’s strategic priorities over the next five years. These include an objective to “support our most promising businesses in the Industrial Strategy priority sectors to scale and stay here.”

The letter notes “Through a two-thirds increase in its annual investments, the Bank will crowd in tens of billions of pounds of private capital with a particular focus on ensuring that our most promising scale-up businesses can access the capital they need to realise their ambitions here in the UK.”

The full text is published at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/statement-of-strategic-priorities-to-the-british-business-bank


Written Question
Retail Trade: Employment
Wednesday 3rd September 2025

Asked by: Julia Lopez (Conservative - Hornchurch and Upminster)

Question to the Department for Business and Trade:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, what assessment he has made of the potential impact of the Employment Rights Bill on the number of retail jobs.

Answered by Justin Madders

On Monday 21 October, the Government published a comprehensive package of analysis on the impact of the Employment Rights Bill. This is available at: http://www.gov.uk/guidance/employment-rights-bill-impact-assessments and provides analysis of the potential sectoral impacts of the Bill, including the retail sector.