Question to the Department for Business and Trade:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, what steps his Department is taking to ensure the British Business Bank supports stocks traded on AIM and Aquis.

The British Business Bank’s mission is to drive economic growth by helping smaller businesses get the finance they need to start, scale and stay in the UK.

Through its equity and debt programmes, the Bank supports privately held businesses in the earlier stages of their growth journey, helping to strengthen the pipeline of companies that reach sufficient scale to access public markets including AIM and Aquis.

Once businesses are traded on a public market, they can access liquidity from existing and new investors by issuing new equity or debt securities.