Question to the Department for Exiting the European Union :

To ask the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, whether his Department intends to conduct an impact assessment of the effect on small businesses of the UK leaving the EU.

The Department for Exiting the European Union, working with officials across Government, is carrying out a programme of rigorous and extensive analytical work that will contribute to our exit negotiations with the EU, to define our future partnership with the EU, and to inform our understanding of how EU exit will affect the UK’s domestic policies and frameworks.

This includes engaging extensively with the millions of small and medium sized businesses throughout Britain who make an enormous contribution to our country. The Government continues to speak widely and regularly with these businesses and representative bodies such as the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) in order to secure the best possible deal for the United Kingdom.

In July, the FSB hosted a small business roundtable attended by Government Ministers. The FSB are also regularly invited to the Business Advisory Group, a forum of business representative organisations who regularly meet with senior Cabinet Ministers, including DExEU Secretary of State David Davis, to highlight their concerns regarding EU exit. Most recently, on 7 December I attended a discussion of the SME Advisory Board, hosted by my colleague Margot James in the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy to discuss the effect of our exit on small and medium sized businesses.