Asked by: Steve McCabe (Labour - Birmingham, Selly Oak)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, whether he plans to introduce grants for small and medium sized business to allow them to invest in renewable energy sources.
Answered by Greg Hands - Minister of State (Department for Business and Trade)
The Government is supporting commercial rooftop solar installation through tax-relief to businesses choosing to install solar panels until March 2023 and business rates exemption for onsite-renewable generation until March 2035. Subject to conditions, existing permitted development rights allow solar on and around domestic and commercial buildings without planning permission. In the British Energy Security Strategy, the Government committed to reviewing the rights and simplify planning processes.
Under the Smart Export Guarantee, small-scale low-carbon electricity generators, with a total installed capacity of up to 5MW, and micro-combined heat and power up to 50kW, can receive payment for renewable electricity they export.
Asked by: Bob Seely (Conservative - Isle of Wight)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what plans his Department has to help increase the survival rate of micro-businesses in rural and isolated communities.
Answered by Paul Scully
The Government is providing a range of support to help small and medium-sized businesses across the UK with rising costs, including those in rural communities. The Government has cut fuel duty for 12 months, raised the Employment Allowance to £5,000, and is zero-rating VAT on energy-saving materials. This builds on existing support, including business rates relief worth £7 billion over five years.
Additionally, Help to Grow programmes will enable eligible SMEs to mitigate the effects of rising costs by providing financial discounts on approved digital technologies up to a value of £5000 and improving SME leadership and management skills though subsidised courses.
Asked by: Mark Hendrick (Labour (Co-op) - Preston)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, how much the Government is (a) paying and (b) receiving for Feed-in Tariffs (FiT) by (i) KWh, (ii) total payments and resale, (iii) various forms of FiT renewables and (iv) commercial and domestic generation.
Answered by Greg Hands - Minister of State (Department for Business and Trade)
Feed in Tariffs is a scheme designed to promote the uptake of small-scale renewable and low-carbon electricity generation technologies. The scheme is funded through Energy suppliers who levy the costs onto consumers.
In Year 11 (20/21) of the FiT scheme, the overall capacity was approximately 6.43 GW, which generated 9.14 TWh of renewable electricity with the annual value of the scheme costing £1.76 billion.
Eligible technologies for FiT include photovoltaic, onshore wind, anaerobic digestion, hydro and Micro CHP. Installed microgeneration (0 – 50 kW) accounted for an installed capacity of 3,484 MW with larger installations (>50 kW) totalling an installed capacity of 2,942 MW.
Details of the tariff structure for each technology can be found here: https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/publications/feed-tariff-fit-tariff-table-1-april-2022.
Asked by: Lord Johnson of Marylebone (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps, if any, they have taken to ensure that the Office for Students’ regulatory approach is supportive of start-up and scale-up businesses and offers a stable environment for long-term investment.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The Office for Students (OfS) considers financial sustainability and business plans when assessing providers during registration.
The OfS is planning further work on minimising regulatory burden on all providers, including those who are new and/or small, to support them to focus on high quality teaching and research. More detail on this, together with its regulatory approach, will be published later this month in the OfS’s new strategy for 2022 to 2025.
The OfS also currently minimises the impact of its regulatory approach on micro and new providers by limiting its registration fees for those providers.
The Higher Education (HE) (Registration Fees) (England) Regulations 2021 continue to contain a micro-entity exemption. This exemption protects the very smallest HE providers (employing up to 50 people) by providing a 100% registration fee exemption.
These most recent regulations also retain protections for new providers in relation to registration fees: the regulations continue to allow for the OfS to charge reduced fees to those new institutions who decide to register with it.
Asked by: David Evennett (Conservative - Bexleyheath and Crayford)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps his Department is taking to support small business growth in (a) Bexley Borough, (b) Greater London and (c) England.
Answered by Paul Scully
Small and medium sized businesses (SMEs) are the backbone of our economy and have a key role to play in driving economic growth. The Government has taken action to support UK SMEs, including support with business rates; increasing the employment allowance; cutting corporation tax from 28% to 19% and exempting small and micro businesses from regulations where possible.
The London Borough of Bexley received £4,852,729 in Local Growth Funding which was delivered through the London Economic Action Partnership.
The British Business Bank’s Start Up Loans programme provides loans of up to £25,000 for those starting a new business, or for businesses which have been trading for up to 24 months. In addition to finance, loan recipients are offered a dedicated mentoring service and access to a free expert business mentor for 12 months to help them with every aspect of setting up a business.
The Start Up Loans programme has delivered over 91,000 loans totalling more than £830m (as at January 2022). 292 loans have been issued in Bexley, totalling over £2,979,262.
Asked by: Ben Bradley (Conservative - Mansfield)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he plans to take steps to mitigate the impact of advertising, promotion and placement restrictions on products that are high in fat, salt and sugar on businesses and jobs in the food and drink manufacturing industry.
Answered by Maggie Throup
The impact assessments for restricting promotions and further advertising restrictions for products high in fat, salt and sugar show a positive net present value for each policy, meaning the health benefits outweigh the costs to business and Government.
Following feedback in response to the public consultations on specific policy proposals on the promotions and placement policy, we have extended the implementation period to October 2022 and included an exemption for micro and small businesses and exempted stores below 185.8 square metres from the location restrictions. On the new advertising restrictions, we have included an exemption for small and medium businesses, brand advertising is out of scope and the online restrictions are limited to paid-for advertising, meaning owned media is out of scope.
Asked by: Chris Loder (Conservative - West Dorset)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what measures announced in his Department's Levelling Up the United Kingdom White Paper will specifically benefit West Dorset.
Answered by Neil O'Brien
The Levelling Up the United Kingdom White Paper upholds the Government’s central mission to reverse the geographical inequalities faced by our communities by spreading opportunity more equally across the country and by bringing left behind communities up to the level of more prosperous areas. This means spreading prosperity to all corners of the UK, including West Dorset.
Firstly, Dorset County Council area is included as one of 55 areas identified by the Department for Education as new Education Investment Areas. More broadly, higher educational attainment will be supported by a £560 million investment over three years into a new National Youth Guarantee.
Second, an additional £1.6 billion has been allocated to the British Business Bank’s Regional Investment Funds, which provide debt and equity finance to SMEs. These funds will be specifically directed toward the South West and North East of England, providing significant opportunity for the 97% of businesses within West Devon that are either small or micro-sized.
Third, Dorset will also see 5 of the 11 new hospital schemes in the South West.
Finally, all areas of the UK will receive an allocation from the UK Shared Prosperity Fund via a funding formula rather than a competition. The fund will seek to restore pride in place to communities across the UK, and a new prospectus will be published later in Spring 2022.
Asked by: Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to promote good practice in combating climate change to (1) listed, and (2) unlisted, companies.
Answered by Lord Callanan - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero)
The Government is working with listed and unlisted companies to encourage ambitious action on climate change.
Listed
Unlisted
Ahead of COP 26, my Rt. Hon. Friend the Prime Minister launched the Together for our Planet Business Climate Leaders’ campaign. The aim of the campaign is to encourage small businesses to make a net zero commitment via the UK Business Climate Hub and get help and advice on reducing their emissions. Tens of thousands of small and micro businesses were reached through this initiative and over 2,400 UK small businesses have pledged to go green and reduce their emissions.
Asked by: Andrew Rosindell (Conservative - Romford)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, whether his Department has made an assessment of the likelihood that shoppers will undertake their Christmas shopping online rather than on the high street as a result of the requirement to wear face coverings introduced on 30 November 2021.
Answered by Paul Scully
We’ve put in place a measured and proportionate set of restrictions and we believe we have struck the right balance in introducing measures to wear face coverings in certain settings.
The retail sector remains a key part of the high street and physical retail remains an important route to consumers. The excellent Small Business Saturday, which I was pleased to support, took place on 4 December, and provides a great way to celebrate small and micro businesses across the UK, highlighting their importance to our local communities and helping them get back on their feet as we look ahead to the economic recovery.
Asked by: Seema Malhotra (Labour (Co-op) - Feltham and Heston)
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 his Department has taken to inform SME businesses of how to reduce their carbon emissions.
Answered by Greg Hands - Minister of State (Department for Business and Trade)
We continue to support UK businesses to meet their net zero commitments alongside engaging large corporates. The former Net Zero Business Champion, my Hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs, led the Race to Zero, a campaign targeting small and micro businesses across the UK. To date 2,507 have joined. Through our small business campaign, the Government has taken an important step towards making net zero relevant to SMEs by helping them access the support they need.
Once they have made the small business climate commitment, businesses receive monthly communications directly from BEIS with the latest policy and regulatory changes, and opportunities such as educational events, consultations and competitions as well as the Together For Our Planet digital toolkit.