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

To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they have any plans to encourage more small businesses to invest in digital transformation and to help those businesses become aware of the tax incentives available for development in that area.

The Government has made considerable effort to engage on these issues through the recent publication of its Digital Strategy in March 2017. We want to create a digital economy that works for everyone and would refer in particular to Chapter 4, The wider economy - helping every British business become a digital business.

In addition, the Business Basics programme aims to reach Small to Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs) across the country to improve their productivity, by looking at the barriers and enablers to implementing technologies such as new accountancy software or performance management systems, building the evidence of effective approaches in the process. Similarly, the Be the Business programme aims to help SMEs better understand the simple changes they can make to boost their productivity through adoption of practical technological solutions. Be the Business has developed a national digital platform and benchmarking tool to engage, educate and enable SMEs to improve their productivity.

Finally, SMEs can claim R&D tax credit for eligible resource costs in R&D projects. Transformation projects involving R&D would qualify for this.