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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps he is taking to support small business growth in Scotland.

Support for businesses in Scotland is largely a devolved matter, and https://www.mygov.scot/business/ provides advice to people starting, running and growing a business, including a section on funding and grants in Scotland. In addition, British Business Bank (BBB) programmes are supporting finance to smaller businesses. As at end of December 2016, BBB programmes were supporting over £1.4m* to small businesses in East Renfrewshire. This includes 33 start-up loans totalling over £170,000.

Alongside designing and delivering programmes through its partners, the British Business Bank works to promote the provision of better information in the market to increase smaller businesses’ understanding of the finance options available to them. The Business Finance Guide (http://www.thebusinessfinanceguide.co.uk/bbb ) sets out the different sources of finance available to businesses – from start-ups to SMEs and growing mid-sized companies.

In order to support innovation by small businesses, Innovate UK awarded 99 projects to SMEs in Scotland with a commitment of £16.7 million in 2016/17.

Small businesses in Scotland also benefit from UK-wide initiatives to encourage investment, for example the Enterprise Investment Scheme and the Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme. If they have business premises, small businesses will also benefit from the Small Business Bonus Scheme and receive 100% relief on their rates bill for property valued below £10,000.

*this does not include ENABLE funding data as this is not available at a constituency level