Question to the Department for Business and Trade:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, what assessment his Department has made of trends in the level of regulation on small and medium-sized enterprises since 2010.

Businesses have told us that regulation can be too complex, stifle progress and innovation and the accumulation of poorly designed regulation over decades is a burden to comply with. Our recently published Action Plan for Regulation will aim to reduce these burdens for SMEs, with a commitment to cut administrative costs for business by 25% by the end of this Parliament. The measures announced in the Action Plan will also support the Government's SME Strategy, which aims to provide SME's with the certainty and support they need to succeed.