Question to the Department for Business and Trade:

To ask His Majesty's Government, with regard to their policy paper Backing your business: Our plan for small and medium sized business (CP 1358), whether they will publish a detailed plan setting out the process and timetable for cutting administrative costs of regulation by 25 per cent for small and medium sized businesses.

Determining the cumulative administrative costs of regulation that businesses face, has not been done for 15 years. That’s why we are undertaking a baselining exercise to understand the administrative costs of regulation to all businesses, including SMEs. We have considered different analytical options and looked to identify the most proportionate methodology to calculate the baseline for costs.

We are working across government to identify savings to deliver this ambitious target and we will set out our more detail in due course.