Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps his Department is taking to reduce the number of business deaths.

In a dynamic and competitive economy, a proportion of businesses will cease trading each year for a range of reasons.

Since the start of Covid, business deaths have averaged around 490,000 per year over 2020/21 down from a yearly average of 500,000 in the period 2016-19.

This Government has provided unprecedented support to businesses in the form of grants, the furlough scheme, and the Covid loan schemes, which provided a lifeline to 1.6 million businesses across the UK – facilitating nearly £80 billion of finance to help them survive the pandemic.