Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what definition of scale-up businesses her Department uses; and what steps she is taking to support those businesses.
We define scaleups using the OECD definition of high growth, i.e. an enterprise with a cumulative average annual growth in employees or turnover greater than 20 per cent per annum over a three-year period, and with more than 10 employees at the beginning of the period.
Scaleups play an important role in the UK economy: they generate around 20% of all turnover in the economy and around 15% of employment, and Scale Ups can play a role in driving innovation. The number of scaleups has risen overall by 25% over the 5 years to 2018 to 33,860.
We have taken a number of actions to create the right conditions for businesses to achieve their potential to grow to scale, including: