Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what plans they have to meet the Booksellers Association to discuss ways to support small creative businesses.

The Booksellers Association regularly engages at Ministerial level with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS).

On 15 July, BEIS published the Build Back Better High Streets Strategy, in which the Government committed to continue working with the retail sector, in particular the Retail Sector Council, on its long-term strategic needs to ensure that businesses are profitable, resilient, innovative, and able to support local economies in socially and environmentally responsible ways.

More broadly, DCMS regularly engages with the creative industries, including the publishing sector, through the Creative Industries Council. I have also met individual booksellers, most recently The Bound in Whitley Bay on 29 January, to hear how the Government can best support small creative businesses.