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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what recent steps he has taken to help ensure that opportunities for business growth are assessed.

Government monitors and evaluates our business support programmes to ensure that opportunities for business growth are assessed. In addition to this independent sources have found:

• Total early-stage Entrepreneurial Activity in the UK in 2021 was 12.6%, increased from 7.8% in 2020[1].
• The UK was the third largest destination in Europe for foreign direct investment in 2021, receiving $27.6bn in inward FDI[2].
• The UK is a centre of global finance and has the strongest venture capital market in Europe, more than France and Germany combined[3].
• The number of scale-ups* stand at 34,000, a rise of 8% over 5 years, and scale-ups account for around 13% of private sectors businesses with 10+ employees.

[1] Global Entrepreneurship Monitor – 2021 Global report

[2] OECD, Most recent FDI statistics for OECD and G20 countries

[3] Tech Nation (2020), UK Tech for a Changing World (https://technation.io/report2020/#11-global-investment-trends) https://technation.io/report2021/#key-statistics

* businesses with 10+ employees with either turnover or employment growth of over 20%