APPG for Entrepreneurship Newsletter: July 2026

In the coming weeks, Andy Burnham will almost certainly enter Number 10 as Prime Minister. He will bring with him a philosophy for government — Manchesterism — forged during his time as the Mayor of Greater Manchester. One of his first proposals has been for a ‘Number 10 North’ which he has said would be the “nerve centre for a rewired Britain”, overseeing devolution of power and resources across the UK.

Britain is one of the most centralised economies in the developed world. The National Institute of Economic and Social Research found the gap in living standards between London and the North East widened from around £4,600 to £7,300 per household over the levelling-up agenda (2019–2023). It’s clear that regional inequality is a huge challenge and there has been a cross-party consensus to tackle this across successive governments.

At the heart of this is the concept of agglomeration. That’s the productivity gains that come about when firms and workers cluster together, share infrastructure, match skills to jobs and exchange ideas.

Devolutionists argue Britain suffers an agglomeration deficit outside the capital. Almost uniquely among developed economies, size fails to translate into productivity in Britain’s big cities. The Centre for Cities has calculated that the national economy is 8.8% smaller because cities such as Birmingham and Manchester lag behind international peers such as Lyon and Frankfurt. It argues this is down to constraints such as density, transport and skills, which only city-level decision-making can fix. In European cities, two-thirds of suburban residents can reach the centre by public transport within half an hour; in Britain, only two in five can.

Sceptics, however, argue that agglomeration is not self-executing. London’s prosperity over the past century tracked national policy far more closely than local governance, and a recent evaluation of the 2017 mayoral devolution deals found no faster-than-expected growth, with any gains skewed towards already-wealthy districts. From this perspective, clustering describes where growth happens but it doesn’t tell you how to create it.

That’s why some believe that Manchesterism may prove difficult to replicate. The city’s strong economic performance rests on advantages that existed before Burnham became mayor — such as a scale that makes agglomeration beneficial and the Oxford Road Corridor (Manchester’s Knowledge Quarter). Many places Burnham will want to grow lack the scale and such high-density clusters. Even in Greater Manchester, economic prosperity has clustered around the city’s core, and the £1 billion Good Growth Fund is an admission of sorts that spillover effects were not reaching all ten boroughs unaided.

Alongside this, a key lesson from recent years is that devolution does not deliver for working people when authority, money and capability lie in different places. The competitive funds of the levelling-up era produced what the Public Accounts Committee referred to as a ‘begging bowl culture’ with bids costing councils around £30,000 each, while only about a quarter were successful.

The devolutionists have a comeback to this. If agglomeration is merely a symptom, why do Lyon, Rotterdam and Frankfurt thrive without being their nations’ capitals? For them, Britain’s single-engine economy is a policy failure rather than being down to London’s economic gravity. The solutions they propose are around trams, density and fiscal powers in the cities themselves. Fiscal powers may be the most telling of these three. Wherever decisions are made, almost no one in the system is rewarded for pro-growth ones. Local governments have little financial stake in the growth of their own economies.

There are really two kinds of devolution on offer. One hands money in the hope that local knowledge makes for better decisions. The other lets places keep the proceeds of growth — and bear the consequences of failure. Only the second changes incentives, and it is the harder sell. Letting places keep the proceeds of growth also means letting them diverge, and fears of a postcode lottery are the likeliest barrier.

APPG AGM — Monday 13 July 2026

The APPG for Entrepreneurship will hold its AGM on Monday 13 July, at 2pm, in Room Q, Portcullis House. Any Peers or MPs who would like to get involved with the group are warmly invited to attend. The formal business is brief, but there’ll be time afterwards to discuss priorities for entrepreneurship policy in 2026. If you can’t join in person let Philip Salter at philip@tenentrepreneurs.org.

Frequent changes to R&D tax relief have eroded trust

Confidence in the R&D tax relief system has been eroded by years of near-constant reforms. That’s one of the key findings from an evidence session we hosted on R&D tax relief earlier this year. These include the merged RDEC scheme, new filing requirements, reduced SME rates, overseas restrictions and the 30% intensity threshold all landing at once. That has been compounded by an aggressive compliance posture from HMRC.

Founders said the result has been a chilling effect. Some legitimate claimants are abandoning the scheme, as a relief designed to incentivise innovation is increasingly treated like a balance-sheet risk to be managed.

Specific failures were highlighted in this session. Advance Assurance is often least available where it’s most needed, such as for repeat claimants and large programmes. Retrospective investigations can drag on for years before ending in near-total vindication at huge cost. HMRC caseworkers lack sector expertise, which is a contrast to some international contexts, such as Canada’s specialist-led model. Founders also noted that the intensity threshold’s cliff edge distorts investment decisions.

Participants stressed the relief remains vital. R&D tax relief is structural to life sciences and key to retaining R&D talent, but constant changes are undermining it. The outcome was a familiar one. Entrepreneurs need more stability and confidence in the system.

Advisory Board Update

Latest news, research and events from our Advisory Board

The Entrepreneurs Network will be bringing together entrepreneurs for No Agenda Breakfasts on 23 July and 27 August. These monthly roundtables give a small group of entrepreneurs the space to talk openly about the issues they’re dealing with.

The Centre for Entrepreneurs (CfE) will be sharing their thoughts and insights on the current state of the UK’s start-up incubator and accelerator landscape. Join them at 08:30 on Wednesday, 15 July, in Central London to learn more from Tim Barnes and Dr Chris Haley, who

will be joined by a selection of ecosystem players, CfE partners and representatives of Innovate UK. Register here.

New research from Tech Hub — a partnership between Enterprise Nation, Google, Sage, Dell Technologies and Square — finds that just one in five British small businesses use AI regularly, despite over half now calling themselves highly or moderately digital. One-person businesses lag furthest behind, at a third versus two-thirds for larger firms. This research was launched at 11 Downing Street during London Tech Week, with a keynote from the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves. You can read the full findings here.

The latest Spotlight on Spinouts report is out from the Royal Academy of Engineering. It finds that UK university spinouts have nearly tripled in value to £49 billion since 2020. You can read more about it here.

The British Chambers of Commerce has just released its latest quarterly economic survey. Its main finding is that the proportion of firms planning to increase investment has fallen to its lowest level since the pandemic. Find out more here.

The Campaign for Science and Engineering has shared its views on what it believes Andy Burnham’s approach to research policy will be.

In Parliament

Questions and comments relating to entrepreneurship this month

The Chair of the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee, Chi Onwurah, urged the Ministry of Defence to support British start-ups and scale-ups in the procurement process:

“Will my right hon. Friend reassure me that the Ministry of Defence is capable of innovatively procuring innovation, with the support of our nation’s start-ups and scale-ups, rather than focusing on the bureaucratic long-term processes?”

She also raised the issue of the procurement process in relation to the NHS:

“The NHS spends £27 billion a year buying stuff that should be helping to give British patients access to innovative treatments, guaranteeing high-tech start-ups and scale-ups their first contract, and enabling clinical trials and exciting new drugs. However, in evidence to the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee, we have heard that bureaucratic processes and a culture of inertia mean that adoption is far quicker in the US, for example.”

Alan Mak questioned the impact of the reduction in Venture Capital Trust Income Tax Relief, to which Treasury Minister Rachel Blake said:

“At the Budget, the Government announced a comprehensive package of entrepreneurship tax measures, designed to provide substantially enhanced support for scaling businesses across the UK. That includes doubling the maximum amount that a company can raise through the enterprise investment scheme and the venture capital trust scheme. Overall, the changes to those schemes are forecast to generate about £100 million per year of additional investment in high-growth, scaling companies, thanks to the increased scheme limits in the Budget.”

Richard Fuller pressed the Government on microfinance and its use in financial inclusion:

“What assessment have the Government made of the use of microfinance platforms targeted at young people, to enable them to take the first steps in building up a credit record or potentially being small-scale entrepreneurs—another great thing that young people could do?”

Our Member Lord Kamall explained the importance of microfinance to entrepreneurs and urged the Government to encourage its practice:

“I am disappointed not to see an explicit reference to microfinance, which in the UK we call community development financial institutions, or CDFIs—non-profit, community-based organisations that offer financial support and credit to individuals and financially excluded entrepreneurs who otherwise might turn to payday lenders.”

Minister for Small Business Blair McDougall launched the small business regulatory taskforce, tasked with developing recommendations to reduce regulatory burdens faced by small and medium-sized enterprises, including microbusinesses. He said:

“I am committed to ensuring the Government provide the best assistance to those brave enough to start a business and it is only right our regulatory environment supports entrepreneurs.”

Looking Forward

Consultations and calls for evidence from government departments and Select Committees

Department for Business and Trade — Make Work Pay: misuse of non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) (Deadline: 8 July 2026)

Industry and Regulators Committee — The relationship between the Government and the defence industry (Deadline: 21 July 2026)

HM Revenue & Customs — Timely Payments in income tax Self Assessment (Deadline: 4 August 2026)

HM Revenue & Customs — Requiring payment of VAT and PAYE return liabilities by Direct Debit (Deadline: 16 August 2026)

Department for Business and Trade — Make Work Pay: ending one-sided flexibility – reforms of zero hours and similar contracts (Deadline: 25 August 2026)

Department for Transport — Automated vehicles: statement of safety principles (Deadline: 9 September 2026)

HM Revenue & Customs — PAYE Settlement Agreements — call for evidence (Deadline: 15 September 2026)

Department for Business and Trade — Make Work Pay: holiday pay compliance and enforcement (Deadline: 22 September 2026)

Office for Product Safety and Standards — Toys safety regulations: call for evidence (Deadline: 6 October 2026)

APPG for Entrepreneurship Newsletter: June 2026

With SXSW London in full swing and founders, investors and policymakers preparing to descend on Olympia next week for London Tech Week, it’s a good moment to reflect on how Britain is faring as a place not just to start a company, but also to scale and stay.

On the first of those three, Britain excels. Few countries can match our density of world-class universities, the level of early-stage finance, or the sheer number of people willing to take the plunge. According to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, 36% of working-age adults in the UK are either running a new business or intending to start one within the next three years.

On scaling and staying in Britain, the picture grows more complicated. The Treasury’s Call for Evidence on tax support for entrepreneurs notes that many promising British companies start casting around overseas for capital and opportunity the moment they try to grow. Founders made a similar observation at a recent APPG Evidence Session: firms often plateau at a modest size, or sell early, at precisely the moment they ought to be rocketing. The UK ScaleUp Investment Report found that although over £17 billion was invested into innovative British companies, fewer than 600 raised Series A or B funding (around £3.5 billion). In addition, only about 7% of seed-funded startups progressed to securing institutional scaleup capital.

The Government has taken several measures, the most notable of which came at last autumn’s Budget, including the biggest overhaul of the Enterprise Management Incentive (EMI) and Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) regimes in over two decades. The gross-assets ceiling for EMI has quadrupled to £120 million — so that companies can roughly double in size and still qualify — and the window to exercise options has been stretched from ten years to fifteen.

Alongside this, the Call for Evidence invited founders and investors to say how the wider tax system — including more difficult questions around Business Asset Disposal Relief — might better support firms at every stage of their journey. It closed in February, and the Government has promised a response in due course. That’s worth watching closely.

In the meantime, there are plenty of bright ideas. UK Private Capital has proposed a Scale-up Reinvestment Relief, to incentivise founders and entrepreneurs to support the ‘flywheel’ effect by reinvesting their capital and expertise into the UK’s startup and scale-up ecosystem. In a similar vein, Tech Nation has floated a ‘Repeat Entrepreneur Relief’, allowing founders to defer capital gains tax on an exit if they reinvest the proceeds into other British startups. Such proposals draw inspiration, in part, from the US QSBS Rollover. In the US, if a founder or investor sells Qualified Small Business Stock (QSBS), Section 1045 lets them defer the entire capital gain — rather than pay tax on it straight away — provided they reinvest the proceeds into a new qualifying startup within 60 days.

The instinct is good; someone who has already built and sold one company is exactly the person you want building — and backing — the next. Of course, there’s work to be done to iron out details around cost and complexity for such a scheme in the UK. But rewarding founders for recycling their capital and hard-won experience back into the ecosystem is a good idea.

At the same time, as the Chartered Institute of Taxation has warned, there’s a danger of leaning too heavily on investor reliefs while overlooking the more mundane grit in the system — the administrative burden, the regulatory friction, the hours founders lose to compliance rather than building. It is a point that chimes with much of what we’re hearing in our APPG Evidence Sessions, and a healthy reminder that tax is only part of the story. Whether a founder chooses to scale here rather than relocate is shaped, too, by broader factors: the supply of talent, the cost of housing, the quality of everyday life, whether a partner can find work and the children a good school.

Adviser Update

Latest news, research and events from our Advisers

With SXSW London in full swing and founders, investors and policymakers preparing to descend on Olympia next week for London Tech Week, it’s a good moment to reflect on how Britain is faring as a place not just to start a company, but also to scale and stay.

On the first of those three, Britain excels. Few countries can match our density of world-class universities, the level of early-stage finance, or the sheer number of people willing to take the plunge. According to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, 36% of working-age adults in the UK are either running a new business or intending to start one within the next three years.

On scaling and staying in Britain, the picture grows more complicated. The Treasury’s Call for Evidence on tax support for entrepreneurs notes that many promising British companies start casting around overseas for capital and opportunity the moment they try to grow. Founders made a similar observation at a recent APPG Evidence Session: firms often plateau at a modest size, or sell early, at precisely the moment they ought to be rocketing. The UK ScaleUp Investment Report found that although over £17 billion was invested into innovative British companies, fewer than 600 raised Series A or B funding (around £3.5 billion). In addition, only about 7% of seed-funded startups progressed to securing institutional scaleup capital.

The Government has taken several measures, the most notable of which came at last autumn’s Budget, including the biggest overhaul of the Enterprise Management Incentive (EMI) and Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) regimes in over two decades. The gross-assets ceiling for EMI has quadrupled to £120 million — so that companies can roughly double in size and still qualify — and the window to exercise options has been stretched from ten years to fifteen.

Alongside this, the Call for Evidence invited founders and investors to say how the wider tax system — including more difficult questions around Business Asset Disposal Relief — might better support firms at every stage of their journey. It closed in February, and the Government has promised a response in due course. That’s worth watching closely.

In the meantime, there are plenty of bright ideas. UK Private Capital has proposed a Scale-up Reinvestment Relief, to incentivise founders and entrepreneurs to support the ‘flywheel’ effect by reinvesting their capital and expertise into the UK’s startup and scale-up ecosystem. In a similar vein, Tech Nation has floated a ‘Repeat Entrepreneur Relief’, allowing founders to defer capital gains tax on an exit if they reinvest the proceeds into other British startups. Such proposals draw inspiration, in part, from the US QSBS Rollover. In the US, if a founder or investor sells Qualified Small Business Stock (QSBS), Section 1045 lets them defer the entire capital gain — rather than pay tax on it straight away — provided they reinvest the proceeds into a new qualifying startup within 60 days.

The instinct is good; someone who has already built and sold one company is exactly the person you want building — and backing — the next. Of course, there’s work to be done to iron out details around cost and complexity for such a scheme in the UK. But rewarding founders for recycling their capital and hard-won experience back into the ecosystem is a good idea.

At the same time, as the Chartered Institute of Taxation has warned, there’s a danger of leaning too heavily on investor reliefs while overlooking the more mundane grit in the system — the administrative burden, the regulatory friction, the hours founders lose to compliance rather than building. It is a point that chimes with much of what we’re hearing in our APPG Evidence Sessions, and a healthy reminder that tax is only part of the story. Whether a founder chooses to scale here rather than relocate is shaped, too, by broader factors: the supply of talent, the cost of housing, the quality of everyday life, whether a partner can find work and the children a good school.

In Parliament

Questions and comments relating to entrepreneurship this month

In a debate on defence readiness, Shockat Adam said:

“I will quickly turn to an example that illustrates precisely what backing businesses ought to look like in practice, and where Government procurement could—if the Government choose—make a transformative difference. I have spoken to local textile business owners in Leicester, the city that used to clothe the world. At one stage, it was the second richest city in Europe because of its industry; unfortunately, it is now on its knees because contracts are being given to foreign companies, such as those in China, instead of to young, hard-working British entrepreneurs. Awarding defence uniform contracts to Chinese manufacturers is not simply an economic error, but a strategic one. It creates supply chain dependency on foreign nations at the precise moment when the Government are asking us to take defence seriously. Leicester’s textile sector exists, the capability exists, and the security case for buying British has never been stronger.”

In that same debate, our officer Victoria Collins said:

“The businesses in our communities—the backbone of our economy—are finding it harder, more expensive and more challenging. Darren, who runs Faire at 190 in Berkhamsted, is a serial entrepreneur who knows what he is doing. He is finding the costs and burdens unsustainable. He says that the continuing rise in staff costs is killing the hospitality sector, and goes on to say: “This Government is driving experienced entrepreneurs away, quietly draining the UK of the people most likely to build, hire and invest again.” Our communities feel again and again that they are done to, not worked with.”

In that same debate, Bayo Alaba said:

“All too often, we hear from SMEs in the defence sector that access to funding is limited, slow-moving and difficult to secure. All too often, we see innovative British companies sell up or even relocate overseas. Take Ballistic Dynamics for example, an SME that is passionate about boosting the UK’s defence capability, but whose founders report facing structural barriers such as a lack of consistent funding opportunities and frustratingly opaque tender processes.”

In oral answers to questions on SMEs in defence procurement, the Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry, Luke Pollard, began by saying:

“SMEs are crucial to our success. Through the Defence Office for Small Business Growth, we are cutting red tape and proceeding towards our ambitious SME spend target of an additional £2.5 billion by summer 2028. Last week we announced, with Sweden, the Gripen contract for £500 million of benefits to be shared not just by large companies but by small businesses across the United Kingdom, reinforcing the fact that defence is an engine for growth.”

In a debate on energy security, Danny Kruger said:

“I was going to intervene earlier on the right hon. Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds), who was bewailing the exit of UK tech entrepreneurs in the AI space and saying that we should be more like Europe in that regard. Those entrepreneurs are not leaving the United Kingdom to go to the EU; they are going to the middle east, the United States or the far east, because those countries have a pro-tech industrial policy, and that is what we need in our country.”

Looking Forward

Consultations and calls for evidence from government departments and Select Committees

HM Revenue and Customs — Cryptoasset taxation — stablecoins (Deadline: 7 May 2026)

Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government — Fees for planning applications (Deadline: 18 May 2026)

Department for Business and Trade — Make Work Pay: threshold for triggering collective redundancy obligations (Deadline: 21 May 2026)

HM Revenue and Customs — Modernising and standardising company tax returns (Deadline: 2 June 2026)

HM Revenue and Customs — Business Systems Integration (Deadline: 2 June 2026)

HM Revenue and Customs — Extend Notification of Uncertain Tax Treatment (UTT) regime (Deadline: 4 June 2026)

HM Revenue and Customs — Reporting company payments to participators (Deadline: 10 June 2026)

HM Treasury — Advance Corporation Tax Reform (Deadline: 11 June 2026)

Insolvency Service — Corporate Civil Enforcement Reforms Consultation (Deadline: 17 June 2026)

Department for Business and Trade — Open for business: implementing a UK corporate re-domiciliation regime (Deadline: 19 June 2026)

APPG for Entrepreneurship Newsletter: May 2026

The ambition that Britain should be ‘the best place in the world to start and grow a business’ has become something of a mantra across government in recent months.

It’s a laudable one — and is, on paper at least, backed by serious commitments such as the £500 million Sovereign AI Fund and £7 billion for UKRI to support the growth and commercialisation of innovative companies.

And yet, when you actually sit down with founders — which is, after all, rather the point of this APPG — you hear a strikingly different story. The UBS Global Entrepreneur Report 2026 recently found that just 7 per cent of European entrepreneurs believe government policy supports their industry. That chimes with an ongoing pulse taken by The Entrepreneurs Network, which consistently finds that very few founders in the UK believe politicians are attuned to the needs of entrepreneurs.

Two recent roundtables, taken together, paint a vivid picture of that disconnect — and the importance of having founders in the room where decisions are made.

The first, hosted by The Entrepreneurs Network and Mishcon de Reya and chaired by the Rt Hon. Lord Willetts, brought together some of the UK’s leading robotics founders with the Regulatory Innovation Office (RIO). Founders described a system in which the entire burden of risk falls on the innovator, where advance guidance is either unavailable or invisible, and where how a technology is classified can matter more than how it actually works. A surgical robot that moves autonomously near patients faces a more enabling framework than a delivery robot trundling down a pavement, simply because one is categorised as a medical device and the other falls into a regulatory no-man’s-land.

The second roundtable was our APPG evidence session on R&D tax relief, chaired by Lord Marks of Hale.

The R&D tax relief system is, in principle, one of the UK’s most important tools for incentivising innovation. Yet the number of SME claims has fallen by roughly 50 per cent over the past three years. Founders described a system so weighed down by complexity, constant rule changes and the fear of retrospective investigation that some have simply stopped claiming altogether.

One founder, whose company had been approved five years running, told us that the prospect of a retrospective enquiry — potentially clawing back hundreds of thousands of pounds — kept him up at night. Several noted that HMRC investigators often lack the sector-specific expertise to assess the claims they are scrutinising, leading to drawn-out enquiries that drain time, money and morale.

They are the kinds of barriers that cause promising companies to plateau at modest valuations, or to decamp to the United States once they reach a certain scale.

Importantly, they are precisely the sorts of insights that risk getting lost if policymakers rely solely on strategy documents and consultation responses rather than hearing directly from the people trying to build things. When founders are in the room, it leads to dialogue; information mentioned in passing, and which may seem of limited importance, can be interrogated. Sometimes it proves to be the most important.

As the APPG for Entrepreneurship, we aim to ensure that the voices of founders are heard. That’s why we’re hosting more of these sessions, such as on entrepreneurship in financially excluded communities. It’s also encouraging that RIO has launched the second phase of its Front Door pilot to provide entrepreneurs with an opportunity to tell the government directly about regulatory barriers holding businesses back.

Adviser Update

Latest news, research and events from our Advisers

Applications are open to the Royal Academy of Engineering’s Shott Scale Up Accelerator. This will provide access to a network of mentors from the UK’s industry leaders, who have founded, scaled and sold businesses. Applications are open until 18 May 2026.

In a new report, the Campaign for Science and Engineering asks what kind of R&D system the UK wants and needs over the coming decades. They have also published analysis of government R&D expenditure.

In May, The Entrepreneurs Network is hosting An Audience with Tom Adeyoola, Executive Chair of Innovate UK.

APPG Adviser Raphael Dennett, Deputy Director of the Centre for Entrepreneurship at the University of Exeter, argues that Britain’s workforce is unprepared for the rapid, poorly managed transition resulting from AI.

In Parliament

Questions and comments relating to entrepreneurship this month

In a debate on global trade and support for businesses, Mark Garnier made the case that the overinterpretation of rules has led to risk aversion in the City:

“[O]verinterpretation of rules and regulations has led to banks being nervous of taking risks, and that has slowed growth in the City and holds up international trade. For example, overinterpretation of anti-money laundering rules means that foreign inward remittances can take up to two weeks to clear into a UK bank account, while poor classification of risk-rated assets potentially starves businesses of growth debt capital.”

In a debate on the economic impacts of events in the Middle East, Baroness Neville-Rolfe highlighted the impact of the UK’s high energy costs on SMEs:

“From an energy perspective, Britain could scarcely be entering this crisis in a weaker position. We face the highest industrial energy costs in the developed world, crippling our manufacturing industries and making life very difficult for our SMEs—and consumer prices are not far behind. This is a dangerous position to be in, and I gently say to the Minister that the public will not thank the Government for ideological gestures. They will expect, and they deserve, practical action to secure our energy future.”

In a debate on the UK-India Technology Security Initiative, Kanishka Narayan said:

“It is no exaggeration to say that our future prosperity depends on our ability to drive innovation-led growth, to secure the supply chains and technologies on which our economy relies and to build a strong research base and skills future so that British people and businesses can thrive. The UK cannot deliver those objectives alone. The technologies that will define the coming decades are global by nature, and success depends on our trusted partnerships.”

In a debate on women’s health strategy, Baroness Merron said:

“Through the strategy, our approach will be to research and development that actually works for, but also empowers, women. That is why I am glad we will be launching a femtech challenge fund. We want to accelerate the adoption of innovations and make sure they transform women’s healthcare. There is also an accelerator for female founders, and that is also key.”

Looking Forward

Consultations and calls for evidence from government departments and Select Committees

HM Revenue and Customs — Cryptoasset taxation — stablecoins (Deadline: 7 May 2026)

Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government — Fees for planning applications (Deadline: 18 May 2026)

Department for Business and Trade — Make Work Pay: threshold for triggering collective redundancy obligations (Deadline: 21 May 2026)

HM Revenue and Customs — Modernising and standardising company tax returns (Deadline: 2 June 2026)

HM Revenue and Customs — Business Systems Integration (Deadline: 2 June 2026)

HM Revenue and Customs — Extend Notification of Uncertain Tax Treatment (UTT) regime (Deadline: 4 June 2026)

HM Revenue and Customs — Reporting company payments to participators (Deadline: 10 June 2026)

HM Treasury — Advance Corporation Tax Reform (Deadline: 11 June 2026)

Insolvency Service — Corporate Civil Enforcement Reforms Consultation (Deadline: 17 June 2026)

Department for Business and Trade — Open for business: implementing a UK corporate re-domiciliation regime (Deadline: 19 June 2026)

APPG for Entrepreneurship Newsletter: April 2026

Our guiding mission here at the APPG for Entrepreneurship is “to ensure that Parliament remains closely informed about what’s needed to foster the best possible environment for entrepreneurs to succeed.” We are always thinking about how to fulfil that objective in new and innovative ways — most recently evidenced by our A-Z of Entrepreneurship. That being said, there is often little substitute for convening a good old-fashioned policy roundtable — bringing parliamentarians and subject-matter experts together to trade insights and practically move agendas forward.

We’re no strangers to the format, but we’ll be the first to hold up our hands and acknowledge that we’ve probably not taken full advantage of them. Until now, that is. Indeed, we’re ramping up our roundtable game — having just held one on unlocking the potential of female-founded spinouts, adeptly chaired by our Officer Victoria Collins MP. We’ve got another in the works on R&D tax breaks, which will be chaired by Lord Marks of Hale; and a further one on financially excluded communities, which will be chaired by Lord Kamall. (For any Parliamentarians reading, if you’d like to get involved, just drop us an email with the policy area in mind that you’d like to dissect.)

Following each roundtable, we’ll produce an anonymised write-up of what was discussed — to ensure that the evidence shared, and the thoughts on how to turn ideas into lasting impact, can be disseminated far and wide. (You can read what was said in our recent spinouts session by clicking here.)

“Politics,” the German economist Max Weber once observed, “is a strong and slow boring of hard boards. It takes both passion and perspective.” We agree. But even the most patient effort is only as effective as the information guiding it. To extend the metaphor further, our roundtables are about sharpening the drill — ensuring that those making policy are better informed by both the experiences of those building businesses from the ground up and the expertise of those whose job it is to help them.

In an era of fast-moving policy challenges, we hope these conversations allow us to respond with greater speed and clarity than traditional processes often permit. Stay tuned for more on this front.

Adviser Update

Latest news, research and events from our Advisers

UK Private Capital shared their response to HM Treasury’s recent call for evidence on tax support for entrepreneurs. Read it in full here, or check out Chris Elphick’s LinkedIn post here for the tl;dr.

London & Partners published their Business Support Strategy, a framework to help London’s micro, small and medium-sized enterprises to start, scale and grow. Read it in full here.

The EIS Association opened applications for the 2026 EISA Awards. Learn more here.

CaSE released fresh polling data exploring how people in Scotland and Wales think and feel about R&D, and politically salient issues, ahead of the May 2026 Holyrood and Senedd elections. Read it in full here.

Tech London Advocates and Global Tech Advocates are hosting ‘Women Leading Deeptech’ on 20 May. Learn more here.

The Entrepreneurs Network published two pieces of research in March: the latest wave of their Entrepreneurs Survey, which you can read here; and a policy paper on how Britain can play a leading role in the growth of the global stablecoins industry, which you can read here.

The Entrepreneurs Network are also hosting a roundtable for founders of robotics firms on 22 April, and an Ecosystem Builders event in Exeter on 24 April.

In Parliament

Questions and comments relating to entrepreneurship this month

In a debate on minimum wage rates, Lord Fox said:

“I am sure the Minister would acknowledge that an important precursor to people having wages is for them to have a job. I am sure that he would also recognise, perhaps reluctantly, that the number of jobs available, particularly for people at the lowest end of the wage scale, has taken a hit of late. So, can the Minister undertake to visit his friends in the Treasury and explain that their unheralded increase in employer NIC contributions has seriously hit the job prospects of the very people that his party said it was here to help?”

In response, Lord Leong replied:

“I fully acknowledge that businesses face challenges and that micro-businesses operate with narrow margins and encounter real pressures, and these businesses are the ones that employ young people. However, the evidence consistently shows that paying staff fairly strengthens businesses in the long run: higher wages and lower staff turnover boost morale and productivity and help businesses keep experienced workers. Crucially, these wages are then spent within local communities, often in small shops, cafés and services right across the country. A national living wage supports not only workers but the resilience of local communities.”

In a debate on UK-based tech companies, our Officer Victoria Collins MP said:

“The funding desert for scale-ups, that valley of death that we heard about, is well known, but it is worrying how normalised it has become. Ben Rose, the co-founder of Supercede, warns that many tech firms are forced to attract capital from overseas to continue growing at pace — we all know that story, unfortunately. Mark Thomas, the CEO of Appnalysis, notes that the £250,000 limit of the celebrated seed enterprise investment scheme has been eroded by inflation and rising costs to the point that it barely buys 12 months of runway. He asks that the Government look at increasing the limit of the scheme. Leo Rogers, the CEO of Curvo AI, calls for R&D tax credits to be extended to cover compute costs, which in the world of AI are really important. The hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare (Dan Aldridge) mentioned the important issue of financing smaller start-ups, which was mentioned by several entrepreneurs who contacted me. They said that would be helpful to get off the ground and to keep going. Sometimes the funding is there, but the communication of where to find it is not.”

In a debate on immigration reforms, Rachel Maskell MP said:

“The policies that have been brought forward for our universities are forcing them into financial ruin. International students have choices, and they used to choose to come to British universities; they are now going overseas. I know from the two universities in my constituency the consequences of the policy. Remove the international student levy, which they should not be paying, and remove the NHS surcharge, which clinicians revile. Ensure that instead we give universities the opportunity to be more inclusive and to have more home students, which the policy clearly rails against.”

In a debate on technology sovereignty, Samantha Niblett MP said:

“As AI becomes embedded across both the public and private sectors, we must recognise the risks posed by concentrated powers in the hands of a small number of overseas tech companies. At its most basic, sovereignty means the ability to make deliberate choices in our own interests, according to our shared values, so it is concerning that so many public sector contracts continue to go to overseas tech giants. In November ’22, Palantir was awarded a three-year Ministry of Defence contract worth £75.2 million, followed by, in December ’25, a further three-year contract worth £240.6 million, both without a formal competitive tender. I would love to see more of those major contracts going to home-grown innovators — companies based in the UK paying taxes here and helping to grow our economy. That is why I am really pleased to hear about the commitment to have a sovereign AI venture fund of £500 million to foster AI development. I would welcome seeing how much of that goes to female founders. The UK is by no means the little guy in this fight. Our start-up ecosystem is the third largest in the world. We have a real opportunity to grow. If we get this right, tech sovereignty can mean high-quality jobs across our regions, and it can ensure that we become the most trusted and safest country in the world for technology.”

In a debate on International Women’s Day, Baroness Lloyd said:

“The British Business Bank, which backs the taskforce, also runs a number of its own empowering initiatives. The bank’s £400 million Investor Pathways Capital programme is an example. It is reducing barriers to entry for new and emerging fund managers. We know that women are twice as likely to back women-led businesses than men, which is why 50% of this capital is ring-fenced for female fund managers. The bank’s diverse angel syndicate initiative also encourages a wide group of investors to back early-stage businesses. The figures from the programme’s pilot were impressive: 185 new angel investors were engaged, and 176 of them were female. This is a strong example of the British Business Bank channelling investment to women-led small businesses with big ambitions. When those founders succeed, our economy and our country succeed.”

Looking Forward

Consultations and calls for evidence from government departments and Select Committees

Department for Energy Security and Net Zero — Future of the UK downstream oil sector (Deadline: 20 April 2026)

Department of Health and Social Care — Proposed 2026 changes to the statutory scheme for branded medicines pricing (Deadline: 21 April 2026)

Department for Science, Innovation and Technology — Mobile Market Review (Deadline: 21 April 2026)

Department for Transport — Reviewing the law for powered mobility devices (Deadline: 22 April 2026)

Department for Business and Trade — Make Work Pay: protection from detriments for taking industrial action (Deadline: 23 April 2026)

Department for Science, Innovation and Technology — Building a future tech sector that works for everyone (Deadline: 23 April 2026)

Department for Business and Trade — Make Work Pay: improving access to flexible working (Deadline: 30 April 2026)

Department for Business and Trade — Make Work Pay: modernising the Agency Work Regulatory Framework (Deadline: 1 May 2026)

Department for Education — AI and other digital technology in children’s social care (Deadline: 1 May 2026)

Migration Advisory Committee — Global Talent and Innovator Founder visas (Deadline: 1 May 2026)

HM Revenue and Customs — Cryptoasset taxation — stablecoins (Deadline: 7 May 2026)

Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government — Fees for planning applications (Deadline: 18 May 2026)

Department for Business and Trade — Make Work Pay: threshold for triggering collective redundancy obligations (Deadline: 21 May 2026)

HM Revenue and Customs — Modernising and standardising company tax returns (Deadline: 2 June 2026)

HM Revenue and Customs — Reporting company payments to participators (Deadline: 10 June 2026)

Department for Business and Trade — Open for business: implementing a UK corporate re-domiciliation regime (Deadline: 19 June 2026)

APPG for Entrepreneurship Newsletter: March 2026

Anyone who has ever worked in Westminster will know just how pervasive jargon and buzzwords can be. While acronyms and the like may save a precious few seconds for those of us deeply embedded within the debate, they can nonetheless leave outsiders isolated.

No policy area is immune, and while I’ve no solid evidence to suggest entrepreneurship disproportionately suffers from it, it can certainly feel that way. Do you know your EIS from your EMI? What’s the difference between Enterprise Zones and Economic Development Organisations? When does a startup become a scaleup?

As the Secretariat for the APPG for Entrepreneurship, we regularly get questions from entrepreneurs who need pointers to navigate Britain’s labyrinthine policy landscape. At the same time, Members of Parliament are often keen to direct confused constituents to helpful resources, but don’t always know where to begin. It’s not our job to actually deliver that help — others are far better placed to — but we thought that the least we could do is compile a repository of convenient explainers of some of the topics that matter most to Britain’s founder community.

That’s where the A to Z of Entrepreneurship comes in. With assistance from policy experts drawn from across the entrepreneurial ecosystem, we’ve pulled together nearly 50 short overviews to demystify key concepts, policies and initiatives.

Our guide covers everything from Accelerators to Zombie Firms, with plenty in between. Moreover, rather than this being a ‘one and done’ project, we want the A-Z to be a living, breathing, and ever-evolving archive — continually being updated and expanded as and when policies change. To that end, if there’s an issue you think we’ve neglected to mention, do get in touch — especially if it begins with Q, X, Z, or indeed any other letter that you’d be proud to play in Scrabble.

Adviser Update

Latest news, research and events from our Advisers

The UK Business Angels Association has a handful of upcoming events. On 23 March they are convening an online training course on How Early-Stage Investment Works; on 26 March they are organising the Early-Stage Investment Summit London; and on 30 March they are hosting another online training course on Venturing into Investing.

Campaign for Science and Engineering launched a new evidence-led review exploring how shifts across the full breadth of the voter landscape might affect R&D advocacy. Learn more here.

The Entrepreneurs Network are hosting a number of Ecosystem Builders events — designed to bring together the individuals and organisations whose mission is to drive innovation, develop the UK’s entrepreneurial ecosystem and strengthen innovation communities. They’ll be in Birmingham on 5 March, Canary Wharf on 9 April, and Exeter on 24 April.

The Entrepreneurs Network are also inviting founders to participate in their latest Entrepreneurs Survey. You’ll have to be quick though, as it closes to respondents at 12pm sharp on Wednesday 4 March.

In Parliament

Questions and comments relating to entrepreneurship this month

In a debate on National Insurance Contributions, Baroness Neville-Rolfe said:

“Small and medium enterprises have been hammered under this Government. They have introduced policies that will cost businesses £25 billion annually in tax compliance alone, according to the firm Together Accounting. Their previous NICs hike added a further £25 billion burden and there are business rate hikes, minimum wage increases and the Employment Rights Act. Is it any wonder that 52 businesses per 10,000 are entering insolvency, nearly double the rate from just five years ago? The Federation of Small Businesses reports that 63% of businesses now cite tax as their primary concern. Business confidence has plummeted.”

In a debate about Student Loan Repayment Plans, Aphra Brandreth MP said:

“Young people are today’s innovators and tomorrow’s entrepreneurs—our future high-skilled workforce, our teachers, doctors and nurses—and the foundations that we set today, and the start that we give them, are an investment in the future of our country and economy. That is why the student finance system matters so much.”

In a debate about Cyber Security and Resilience, Dr Ben Spencer MP said:

“There is a sense in the UK that we are getting gummed up by regulation and obsessing more and more about limitations and restrictions to businesses. In that environment, people and organisations that do well financially, succeed and grow are seen as either targets or cheats—as something that we can go for, tax and punish. We have lost or diminished our can-do attitude when it comes to supporting the risk takers and the entrepreneurs, who are the people and organisations building the MSPs and data centres on which our economy relies.”

In a debate about Fast-Track Visas and Skilled US Citizens, Mike Tapp MP said:

“A world-class visa system is essential to attracting and retaining the best international talent. Our system is just that, but we are committed to going further and have already introduced pro-talent reforms. That includes expanding eligibility for the high potential individual visa to the top 100 global universities; enabling international students to transition seamlessly from study to entrepreneurship on the innovator founder visa; simplified access for top science talent; and a broadened list of eligible prizes for the global talent visa.”

In a debate about Rural Mobile Connectivity, Helen Morgan MP said:

“Improving rural phone signal would not just help vulnerable individuals. It would help local businesses, grow the economy and help our health and social care system. Smartphones are an essential part of daily modern life, whether that is for a GP patient who needs to book an appointment or request a repeat prescription or for a small business owner who needs to take payment from a customer. I have spoken to countless elderly people who struggle to access key services. I have heard from farmers, landscape gardeners, taxi drivers and dog groomers whose businesses all suffer because of signal problems.”

In a debate about Taxation on Small and Medium-sized Enterprises, Gregory Stafford MP said:

“In my constituency, I repeatedly hear the same message from business owners about staffing pressures, soaring energy bills and rising financial costs, which in many cases have more than trebled as a direct result of decisions taken by this Government. That is not anecdote; it is reflected clearly in the data. Research from Xero shows just how precarious the situation has become: two in five SMEs do not even know whether they were profitable last month. That is not confidence; that is business flying blind.”

Looking Forward

Consultations and calls for evidence from government departments and Select Committees

HM Treasury — Reforming the customs treatment of low value imports into the United Kingdom (Deadline: 6 March 2026)

Financial Services Regulation Committee — Growth and proposed regulation of stablecoins in the UK (Deadline: 11 March 2026)

Ministry of Defence — Review of MOD legislation governing autonomous systems (Deadline: 13 March 2026)

Energy Security and Net Zero Committee — Reviewing the electricity market (Deadline: 27 March 2026)

Department for Energy Security and Net Zero — Future of the UK downstream oil sector (Deadline: 20 April 2026)

Department of Health and Social Care — Proposed 2026 changes to the statutory scheme for branded medicines pricing (Deadline: 21 April 2026)

Department for Science, Innovation and Technology — Mobile Market Review (Deadline: 21 April 2026)

Department for Transport — Reviewing the law for powered mobility devices (Deadline: 22 April 2026)

Department for Business and Trade — Make Work Pay: protection from detriments for taking industrial action (Deadline: 23 April 2026)

Department for Business and Trade — Make Work Pay: modernising the Agency Work Regulatory Framework (Deadline: 1 May 2026)

Department for Business and Trade — Make Work Pay: threshold for triggering collective redundancy obligations (Deadline: 21 May 2026)

APPG for Entrepreneurship Newsletter: February 2026

Last week, readers of The Times and The Economist were treated to a pair of articles about Britain’s startup prowess that struck a similar chord. First, talk of Britain’s economic demise is overegged — and with respect to generating new, exciting, investable companies, few do it better than the United Kingdom. Second, nurturing a dynamic ecosystem of ambitious founders isn’t simply a matter of setting a competitive tax regime or creating a permissive regulatory environment. A whole panoply of factors needs to be present, many of which will be far removed from typical ‘business policy’ concerns.

Take crime, for instance. Nobody wants to live in an unsafe neighbourhood. It’s an underrated part of Britain’s lure to founders, investors and other savvy sorts, therefore, that our cities are, on the whole, far safer than many equivalents in the United States and Europe. Despite what you might hear about our capital, you’re much more likely to be a victim of a violent crime in San Francisco than in London.

Or education. While many startup founders’ exam days are long behind them, those with children will naturally want to make sure they’re taught well. If we look at PISA rankings — which evaluate educational systems based on pupils’ performance on mathematics, science and reading at age 15 — the UK outdoes almost all European nations, while beating the US on mathematics and science. Meanwhile, at the university level, Britain famously punches well above its weight, and the intellectual crucibles of Oxford and Cambridge offer innovators an attractive alternative to London if they’re more their speed.

Entrepreneurs might be some of the most time-scarce people in the world, but when they do have a moment to spare, there are few better places in which to relax than Britain. We boast some of the most visited museums, art galleries, theatres, music venues and sports grounds in the world. Our restaurant scene is impeccable. While it may rain a little more than we like (though it’s actually drier than you might think), it’s hardly ever too hot or too cold (and if you fancy a temporary change of scenery, Heathrow is the globe’s most connected airport).

With all this in mind, what should the takeaway be for policymakers? First and foremost, I think we should remember that even top entrepreneurs are not simply inert inputs we throw into a machine and receive wonderful goods and services from. While a handful may be willing to grind out work with little regard to what’s going on around them, the majority are perfectly ordinary human beings. As much as they care about growing their startups, they also want to enjoy their lives — making friends, raising a family, finding meaning, and so on.

So by all means let’s make sure founders know Britain is open for business. Ministers are well versed in championing measures like the Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme or the creation of the Regulatory Innovation Office, and long may that continue. But I wonder if we’re missing a trick by not shouting more about what else we get right — the ‘softer’, less replicable advantages that can’t be legislated for at the simple stroke of a minister’s pen.

Second, throughout writing this newsletter, I’ve been acutely aware that many of Britain’s selling-points are, if we’re being honest, applicable only to London. I’m breaking no new ground to say that we should think carefully about how to spread opportunity across the entire nation. How to do that, exactly, is a far harder task, and will require much more than fine rhetoric.

On this point, another recent piece, from Andy Haldane in the Financial Times, gives us a good starting point. While I don’t agree with everything he writes, I am highly sympathetic to the idea that greater devolution to city-region mayors could pay dividends. As Britain Remade’s Sam Dumitriu recently noted, affording them more control over taxation and planning policy could prove to be a powerful pro-growth measure — if mayors know they’ll reap more of the financial rewards that result from authorising fresh developments or enticing in new earners, they’ll be much more likely to do so.

Agglomeration, as I’ve written about before, is a central feature of economic growth. For entrepreneurs in particular, being in close proximity to likeminded people is essential. Something that’s implicit, but not always given enough attention, when discussing agglomeration is that creating places where people want to converge really does matter. That’s not something any single politician can centrally plan — it will require officials focusing efforts across a range of policy domains to get things right.

Adviser Update

Latest news, research and events from our Advisers

The Campaign for Science and Engineering published new research on public attitudes to R&D and businesses. They will also be holding a conference to celebrate their 40th birthday on 10 February.

On 25 February, the CBI will convene business leaders, policymakers and stakeholders from across the innovation ecosystem at the release of their upcoming report on investing in innovation. Learn more here.

The Entrepreneurs Network and Barclays unveiled their latest report from the Female Founders Forum, which examined the experiences of female academic entrepreneurs when it comes to spinning out research.

The Institute of Directors published three reports — one on non-executive directors, another on AI governance in the boardroom, and a Code of Conduct for directors.

The Enterprise Research Centre added videos from their latest State of Small Business Britain conference to YouTube. Watch them all here.

The Centre for Entrepreneurs, working with Innovate UK, has launched the Incubator and Accelerator survey for 2026. If you help run a startup incubator, accelerator, training programme, meet up or mentoring scheme, please consider taking a few minutes to help them understand how the sector is doing.

In Parliament

Questions and comments relating to entrepreneurship this month

In a debate on the Retail and Hospitality Sector, Lord Borwick said:

“Behind every retail shop and every hospitality pub is an entrepreneur. They need to be encouraged. If we are lucky, she or he will be a driven individual, determined to do well despite problems. These entrepreneurs feel unappreciated —so many of them are leaving for places such as Dubai because of government policy. This happened in the 1960s and was called the brain drain. Their children, the entrepreneurs of the future, may easily never come back.”

In a debate on the Defence Industry, Luke Charters MP said:

“The challenges we have talked about in procurement, ESG and access to finance hit SMEs the hardest. They do not have big teams of financial experts, and the larger primes can navigate the challenges more easily as they have access to wider capital pools that the smaller firms do not. There is a risk of strategic contradiction, because on the one hand we are asking defence firms to scale, innovate and deliver at pace, but on the other hand we seem to be tolerating a financial system that treats some firms as a reputational liability. That is not sustainable, to borrow a term. The issue is not necessarily ESG principles themselves, but the absence of clarity in how lenders apply their risk tolerance to defence. ESG concerns are only one part of the financing challenge facing defence firms, alongside credit risk, contracting structures and cash flow, but they are the tip of the iceberg. Because these issues are often poorly defined, they create uncertainty that deters lending.”

In a debate on Superintelligent AI, Lord Hunt said:

“I stress, particularly to my noble friend, that I am no Luddite when it comes to AI. It can bring unprecedented progress, boost our economy and improve public services. We are number three in the global rankings for investment in AI. I understand why the Government do not want to seem to be overregulating this sector when it is so important that we develop innovation and investment in the UK, but we cannot ignore the huge risks that superintelligent AI—or ASI, as I will call it—may bring. I am using this debate to urge the Government to consider building safeguards into ASI development to ensure that it proceeds only in a safe and controllable manner, and to seek international agreement on it.”

In a debate on cryptoassets, Lord Holmes said:

“At stake is a growth matter and a global economic matter. This is a way to effectively change how government debt is treated in a material way for the economy. More broadly, in considering the whole issue around crypto and digital assets, having even greater clarity from the Government, beyond growth and innovation, and making a clear statement as to what we want as the UK—what position we want to play when it comes to cryptocurrencies, assets, digital assets and stablecoins, sharpening the arrowhead of the Government’s mission—would be incredibly helpful across this industry. We have an extraordinary opportunity that we can take only if we make the changes to these regulations.”

Answering questions about a Digital Identity Scheme, Josh Simons MP said:

“By the end of this Parliament, every UK citizen who wants a digital ID will be able to get one free of charge. To deliver that, we will launch a huge digital inclusion drive across the UK, and I look forward to working with hon. Members from across the House on that, including my hon. Friend. Like Estonia, we will build the UK system to earn citizens’ trust, adhering to the principles of data minimisation and decentralisation with strong safeguards in place. We will consult imminently on how best to design that system.”

In a debate on Youth Unemployment, Joy Morrissey MP said:

“We have rising youth unemployment, and the issue is taxation. Our businesses are facing an increased national insurance rate, and business rates on the high street are high. Hospitality and retail businesses are being taxed to the point where they cannot take on another employee, and usually that employee is a young person who is being given their first opportunity. The Government are making the job market so rigid and protecting workers’ rights to the point where there will be no jobs available by the time young people are looking to get into employment. The Government are making it so restrictive that businesses do not want to take on new employees. First, they are not able to afford to and, secondly, there is so much restriction when they go to hire a new employee that they just will not do it. That will not be dealt with, and youth unemployment will continue to rise.”

In a debate on startups, Lord Hunt asked:

“My Lords, does the Minister share my concern that an increasing number of entrepreneurs are saying that Britain is becoming an increasingly unattractive place to grow a business? Given that AI start-ups, in particular, depend on access to powerful data centres for success, the principal barrier that she could address is that we have the highest electricity prices in Europe. Will she now set out a clear strategy to reduce electricity costs so that AI companies can realistically build scale and remain in Britain?”

To which Baroness Lloyd replied:

“Our approach to the AI opportunity is comprehensive. It includes the AI growth zones which are being announced and include full access to energy as part of the package as well as local skills packages of £5 million per area to ensure that local areas benefit from these AI growth zones.”

Looking Forward

Consultations and calls for evidence from government departments and Select Committees

Office for National Statistics — Census 2031 Topic Consultation (Deadline: 4 February 2026)

Public Accounts Committee — Youth employment, education and training (Deadline: 12 February, 2026)

HM Treasury — Business Rates and Investment: Call for Evidence (Deadline: 18 February 2026)

Department for Business and Trade — Business support for co-operatives and non-financial mutuals (Deadline: 18 February 2026)

Department for Education — International student levy technical detail (Deadline: 18 February 2026)

Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and HM Treasury — Visitor levy in England (Deadline: 18 February 2026)

Public Accounts Committee — Unlocking land for housing (Deadline: 23 February 2026)

Public Accounts Committee — Access to Work Scheme (Deadline: 23 February 2026)

HM Treasury — Tax Support for Entrepreneurs: Call for Evidence (Deadline: 28 February 2026)

HM Treasury — Reforming the customs treatment of low value imports into the United Kingdom (Deadline: 6 March 2026)

Financial Services Regulation Committee — Growth and proposed regulation of stablecoins in the UK (Deadline: 11 March 2026)

APPG for Entrepreneurship Newsletter: January 2026

With Parliament now returned from its Christmas break, it’s worth revisiting the Prime Minister’s New Year message — even if, when Sir Keir Starmer delivered it on 31 December, many of us were probably more focused on festive logistics than political rhetoric.

Permeating Starmer’s message was a vow to tackle the cost of living. For a Prime Minister under pressure, it’s not hard to understand why. More than three decades have passed since James Carville, an election strategist to the soon-to-be President Bill Clinton, coined the phrase “It’s the economy, stupid!” and it remains as true today as it did back in 1992. Recent contests suggest that ‘affordability politics’ seems to be a promising narrative with which to unite disunited electorates.

What was striking, however, was how much of the speech focused on reducing the cost of individual budget line-items — energy bills, rail fares, childcare — and how relatively little attention was paid to the other side of the equation: helping people earn more. That is surprising not least because growth is repeatedly described as the Government’s number one mission, and because two major Labour policies coming into force in 2026 are often defended precisely on the grounds that they could support higher earnings and productivity.

From April, the first key tranches of the Employment Rights Act will commence, including making parental leave a ‘day-one right’. Throughout the year and into 2027, further rights will be granted to workers. As it passed through Parliament, the Act’s likely impact was hotly contested, with most in the private sector concerned about its economic consequences. One argument that it would benefit the economy, however, was that it could actually create a more liquid labour market if it means workers aren’t worried about losing protections if they switch jobs.

A month later in May, the Renters Rights Act will come into force, again rebalancing power — this time between tenants and landlords. One of its key provisions is to allow renters to exit tenancies earlier than was typically possible in the past. Here too, advocates argue that greater flexibility could support economic dynamism, enabling workers to relocate more easily in response to job opportunities, regional growth, or changing personal circumstances.

For entrepreneurs and high-growth firms, these arguments matter. Dynamic labour markets — where people can change jobs, move cities, and take risks — are central to productivity growth. But whether these reforms will deliver that outcome in practice remains uncertain. Plausible counterarguments are easy to construct. Firms weighing up whether to make a marginal hire may become more cautious if the perceived risks of taking on new staff increase, particularly for less experienced workers. Likewise, while greater tenant flexibility may help some workers pursue new opportunities, that benefit could be undermined if landlords respond by withdrawing properties from the rental market altogether.

Nobody should begrudge the Prime Minister for wanting people to have more money in their pockets at the end of the month. But we’ll be missing a trick if we convince ourselves the only way to do that is by minimising current expenditures. For policymakers serious about growth, entrepreneurship, and long-term prosperity, the harder task is to focus on increasing real productivity. That may not make for the snappiest soundbite, but it is ultimately the only sustainable way to make people meaningfully better off.

Adviser Update

Latest news, research and events from our Advisers

The Institute of Directors published the Autumn instalment of their Director magazine — including an interview with Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride. Read it in full here.

The Campaign for Science and Engineering analysed UK Research and Innovation budget allocations, and also dug into new data on private sector R&D.

In January, The Entrepreneurs Network is hosting a meetup of entrepreneurship ecosystem builders, as well as their latest House of Lords reception to celebrate female founders.

In Parliament

Questions and comments relating to entrepreneurship this month

The Housing Secretary Matthew Pennycook gave a statement on the Government’s latest planning reforms:

“As well as setting out national planning policy in a clearer and more comprehensive manner, we are proposing a number of substantive reforms to boost housing supply and unlock economic growth in the years ahead. These include a permanent presumption in favour of sustainable development, building on the proposals outlined in our brownfield passport working paper to make development of suitable land in urban areas acceptable by default; a default yes for suitable proposals for development of land around rail stations within existing settlements and around well-connected stations outside settlements, including on green-belt land, to ensure that sufficiently dense development comes forward around existing transport infrastructure; and a targeted series of changes to drive urban and suburban densification, including through the redevelopment of corner and other low-density plots, upward extensions, infill development and residential curtilages.”

In a debate on artificial intelligence safety, Kanishka Narayan told colleagues:

“We are investing in AI to drive breakthroughs in developing new drugs, cures and treatments. But we cannot harness those opportunities without ensuring that AI is safe for the British public and businesses, nor without agency over its development. I was grateful for the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes Central (Emily Darlington) on the importance of standards and the hon. Member for Harpenden and Berkhamsted (Victoria Collins) about the importance of trust. That is why the Government are determined to make the UK one of the best places to start a business, to scale up, to stay on our shores, especially for the UK AI assurance and standards market. Our trusted third-party AI assurance roadmap and AI assurance innovation fund are focused on supporting the growth of UK businesses and organisations providing innovative AI products that are proven to be safe for sale and use. We must ensure that the AI transformation happens not to the UK but with and through the UK.”

In a debate following the Autumn Budget, Callum Anderson made the case for future budgets to prioritise tax simplification:

“I will close my remarks by mentioning what I hope will be given consideration in a finance Bill in future parliamentary Sessions: the Government may wish to dedicate themselves to pro-growth and pro-enterprise tax reform. The previous Government, and indeed many Governments of different political orientations, have increased the length of the tax code, increased the number of cliff edges, complicated the tax base and, frankly, fundamentally failed to close or tackle various loopholes. As we rededicate ourselves to growth in this parliamentary Session and in future parliamentary Sessions, we would do well to ensure that simplification and fairness anchor our growth agenda.”

Jack Rankin argued higher employment taxes are driving an uptick in young people emigrating from Britain:

“In the last year to March, 176,000 people aged 16 to 34 left Britain. Net migration may be down, but that is only because young Brits are fleeing the country under this Government. This is a national crisis, and it is really a question about the future of our country. If young people do not think they can thrive, they will not put down roots and have families, and there will be no next generation to fund the pensions and public services of the future that we will all rely on. That feeling of disillusionment has not come around by accident. I would not pretend to the Minister, who gives as good as he gets, that my party delivered in some of these areas, particularly in house building and the intergenerational compact, but the past two Budgets have made things demonstrably worse. The increase to employer’s national insurance in the first Budget created a freeze on hiring, and saw vacancies down and unemployment up. The Office for Budget Responsibility has shown that this could cost almost 50,000 jobs, and stats out today show that unemployment has risen to 5.1%. Increasing the national minimum wage has an impact on hiring and it further squeezes those on middle incomes. It could mean that baristas and shop assistants are dragged into paying back their student loans despite seeing no benefit from the so-called graduate premium.”

Daisy Cooper urged a rethink on business rates to protect high-street businesses:

“The bottom line is that hospitality and high-street businesses have just two choices: they can shut up shop, or they can put up prices. There are few things that speak to the economic health of the nation and the high street more than the price of a pint. I issue a warning to the Government now: if they do not act, customers will see the £10 pint before the next general election, on Labour’s watch. I call on Ministers again to use the powers that the Government gave themselves to reduce the multiplier by the full 20p, and to make an emergency VAT cut for our hospitality businesses to boost growth, stimulate consumer confidence and help save our high streets.”

Ben Coleman called for closer alignment with the European Union to boost exports:

“We must recognise that there is no swifter route to growth than getting rid of Brexit red tape. I welcome the fact that the UK and the EU are currently negotiating an agreement to ditch much of the Brexit bureaucracy that has hit our food and drink exports and imports. I hope that will lead to lower food prices and new job opportunities for the British people. I would like to see us go even further. For example, let us boost our manufacturing industry by seeking mutual recognition with the EU of conformity assessments. Let us boost our services sector by seeking mutual recognition of professional qualifications.”

In a debate on the Technology Adoption Review, Lord Clement-Jones asked:

“In light of Sir Paul Nurse’s recent warnings that high visa fees and restrictive rules are actively deterring early career researchers and damaging the UK’s science base, will the Government commit to aligning research visa policy with their technology adoption ambitions, say, by emulating the Canada Global Impact+ Research Talent Initiative?”

In response, Baroness Lloyd of Effra said:

“The noble Lord is right that attracting high-calibre talent to this country is incredibly important. We have a number of ongoing initiatives to do that, including the Global Talent Taskforce, as well as through academia, as my noble friend the Minister with responsibility for science and technology talked about. The digital skills jobs plan will also set out how we can support that aim and get the balance right between growing homegrown talent and attracting those we need to from abroad, so that we have the best chances of growing our science base and the spin-outs.”

Looking Forward

Consultations and calls for evidence from government departments and Select Committees

Department for Science, Innovation and Technology — AI Growth Lab (Deadline: 7 January 2026)

Treasury Committee — Financial Inclusion Strategy (Deadline: 12 January 2026)

Department for Business and Trade — Make Work Pay: leave for bereavement including pregnancy loss (Deadline: 15 January 2026)

Industry and Regulators Committee — Regulators and growth (Deadline: 16 January 2026)

Department for Business and Trade — British Industrial Competitiveness Scheme: consultation on scheme eligibility and approach (Deadline: 19 January 2026)

Justice and Home Affairs Committee — Settlement, Citizenship and Integration (Deadline: 23 January 2026)

Department for Work and Pensions — Young People and Work Report: Call for Evidence (Deadline: 30 January 2026)

Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency — Regulation of AI in Healthcare (Deadline: 2 February 2026)

Office for National Statistics — Census 2031 Topic Consultation (Deadline: 4 February 2026)

HM Treasury — Business Rates and Investment: Call for Evidence (Deadline: 18 February 2026)

Department for Business and Trade — Business support for co-operatives and non-financial mutuals (Deadline: 18 February 2026)

Department for Education — International student levy technical detail (Deadline: 18 February 2026)

Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and HM Treasury — Visitor levy in England (Deadline: 18 February 2026)

Public Accounts Committee — Access to Work Scheme (Deadline: 23 February 2026)

HM Treasury — Tax Support for Entrepreneurs: Call for Evidence (Deadline: 28 February 2026)

HM Treasury — Reforming the customs treatment of low value imports into the United Kingdom (Deadline: 6 March 2026)

APPG for Entrepreneurship Newsletter: December 2025

After weeks of briefings and counter-briefings, Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves delivered the Autumn Budget last Wednesday. In this month’s newsletter, we’ll take a look at the parts that matter most to Britain’s entrepreneurs, alongside verdicts from some of our Advisers.

We can start auspiciously. Unveiled in tandem with the Budget was Reeves’ entrepreneurship adviser Alex Depledge’s self-dubbed “Love Letter to Entrepreneurs” – which absolutely lives up to its billing. In its foreword from the Chancellor, while noting that Britain has “no shortage of ideas or talent,” there’s a recognition that things aren’t working as well as they could be for founders restless to see their businesses grow. As Reeves puts it:

“Somewhere along the way – in business and in government – we have become too focussed on managing the downside and not nearly focussed enough on maximising the upside. We have built systems around caution, not conviction. Around stasis, not momentum.”

Entrepreneurs will welcome the candour, and the rhetoric that suggests the Government really does understand the fundamentals that underpin successful startup ecosystems – dynamism, innovation, and risk. But what they should be happiest about are the policy wins that Depledge has managed to chalk up. Among other things, these include: doubling the eligibility for the Enterprise Investment Scheme, Venture Capital Trust scheme and the Enterprise Management Incentive scheme; harnessing new funding models for spurring innovation in procurement; and introducing a new UK Listings Relief, allowing newly listed firms to be exempt from Stamp Duty Reserve Tax on their shares for three years.

All of these measures firmly point the country in a better direction. They are not, however, without critique. The BVCA’s Chris Elphicke, for instance, calls the reduction of upfront income tax relief for VCTs a ‘fly in the ointment’, while Startup Coalition would have liked to see Stamp Duty on shares abolished entirely.

It should also be said that Depledge’s “Love Letter” is only one part of a much larger Budget. And it’s in these other aspects that the business groups were generally less enthusiastic. Each of the CBI, FSB and IoD bemoaned the fact that taxes are forecast to hit new highs in years to come. Philip Salter of The Entrepreneurs Network lamented not only the growing overall tax burden, but also how the Budget failed “to deliver the fundamental tax reform the system desperately needs.” In their response, the Campaign for Science and Engineering focused on the new International Student Levy, which will charge foreign students £925 per year, and, they warn, ultimately damage universities’ ability to invest in R&D.

Given the diversity of Britain’s economy, no budget will ever please everyone. There will always be winners and losers. All things considered, though, most entrepreneurs probably came away from last Wednesday more optimistic than when they went in – thankful for the pro-startup policies it included, and perhaps even more relieved about the anti-startup ones it did not. But that doesn’t mean everything is rosy. Even the most adept founders will see their startups’ trajectories limited by the rate of growth experienced in the wider world around them. If the economy fails to click into gear, the likelihood of further, harsher tax hikes only increases, and the Chancellor will find it harder to offer incentives for expansion.

For all our sakes, let’s hope the measures on the positive side of the ledger will be enough to stave off decline.

Adviser Update

Latest news, research and events from our Advisers

The Entrepreneurs Network published their latest Job Creators report – revealing the disproportionate role foreign-born founders play in Britain’s entrepreneurial ecosystem. They also unveiled the latest edition of their Entrepreneurs Survey.

The Campaign for Science and Engineering launched their Public Attitudes to R&D 2025 report. On 10 February 2026, they will also hold a conference to celebrate their 40th anniversary.

Enterprise Nation issued the results of their latest Small Business Barometer. Read them in full here.

Innovation Growth Lab published analysis of how Alphafold 2 has contributed to the acceleration of research and scientific impact.

In Parliament

Questions and comments relating to entrepreneurship this month

In a Lords debate on economic growth and taxation, Lord Elliott argued that the tax landscape is driving up emigration of entrepreneurs:

“The final factor we need for economic growth is abundant enterprise, and taxation is a crucial driver of that. In 1998, Gordon Brown introduced taper relief for capital gains tax. This scheme incentivised long-term investment and had no lifetime limit on holding assets, with a long-term CGT rate of just 10%. Today the picture is very different. From next April, the rate will be 18% up to £1 million and 24% beyond that. We need to acknowledge the impact that these and other changes to incentives have on our economy. As we see the rise of remote working, the mobility of people must be a key consideration when making any tax changes. This is already happening, with 16,500 high net worth individuals, many of them entrepreneurs and investors, expected to leave the UK in this year alone.”

In a Lords debate on visas for highly skilled people, Lord Fox asked:

“[T]eams of researchers contain all sorts of different people, but some of the key people are not necessarily the best paid people in that team, and those salary restrictions may well not meet the Home Office’s criteria. What is the Home Office doing to work with the taskforce to make sure that a whole team can come to the United Kingdom, which would probably affect whether it came or not?”

In response, Lord Lemos said:

“[T]his is all currently under consultation. We will, of course, look at all the routes in the way the noble Lord asks me to. To be clear, salary levels are not the only things that will influence our approach to global talent, high-potential individuals and the various schemes that we have. As I have already said, we will be careful to avoid the unintended consequences.”

In a Lords debate on private equity, Baroness Moyo argued:

“[T]oday, in the UK context, private equity faces challenges, including finding a route to sell companies it has invested in and nurtured. This is, in part, due to the UK’s capital markets having weakened and investor interest in IPOs and public markets falling away. Worryingly, this year the United Kingdom has fallen out of the world’s top 20 IPO markets. Additionally, private equity investors are struggling to find promising new UK companies to invest in, highlighting burdensome regulation that ultimately holds back growth and puts the UK at a distinct disadvantage in the global competition for investment capital.”

In a Commons debate on specialist manufacturing, Josh Fenton-Glynne cited the impact tariffs are having on businesses:

“It will come as a relief to many Members that I am not in the Treasury, so rather than talking about statistics, I will share what local manufacturers tell me. They tell me that their order book has never been so bad, because of the impact of tariffs. The lack of stability means companies are not making long-term decisions that would see them step up. That is why we need a strong domestic manufacturing sector, but it is also why we need to be strategic in our support for the industry and how we spend our money on the infrastructure that we need to rebuild.”

In a Lords debate on military procurement, Lord Cromwell asked:

“Can the Minister tell the House how the defence industrial strategy will engage with SMEs, for example in supplier networks such as the neutral vendor framework for innovation?”

In response, Lord Coaker said:

“We have established and are looking to grow a defence office for small business, which will be important. The noble Lord’s point is an extremely good one. The idea that the solution is always massive business has been shown by Ukraine not to be the case. The development of small business and small industry—the noble Lord gave the example of drone manufacture on a small-time basis—has been essential to the Ukrainian effort against the illegal Russian threat. His point about how we can develop that sort of capability and capacity is important for us all and something we need to learn from.”

In a debate on the Budget, Ed Davey argued:

“The Government know the damage that the Conservative-Reform Brexit deal has done to every family and business across our country, yet they choose to reject the single biggest policy for ending the cost of living crisis, turbocharging economic growth and boosting tax revenues without raising tax: a new trade deal with Europe. We need to properly fix our broken relationship with Europe, with a new customs union. We can grow our economy by freeing British businesses from the costs, barriers and red tape favoured by the Conservatives and Reform. Rather than trying to tax our way out of debt, as Labour is choosing to do, the Liberal Democrats would grow our way out of debt.”

In topical questions, Ian Sollom asked:

“The UK’s universities do indeed produce world-class research, but I would suggest that we are still missing too many opportunities in commercialisation. The Government’s proof of concept fund is really quite inadequate—from the figures, it is 30 times oversubscribed—and equity and intellectual property arrangements are laborious and deter both investors and entrepreneurs. Will the Secretary of State commit to expanding that proof of concept funding and reforming those barriers that hold back university spin-outs?”

In response, Liz Kendall said:

“[W]e do not lack in great ideas or great start-ups in this country. We need to support them better to scale up, and that is what the Government are doing across a range of sectors. The hon. Gentleman can look at the actions we are taking on UK pension schemes, to get them to invest more in UK companies, and in the Treasury and across the board. I am sure there is more we can do, but it is absolutely at the top of our agenda.”

Looking Forward

Consultations and calls for evidence from government departments and Select Committees

Business and Trade Committee – Priorities of the Business and Trade Committee for 2026 (Deadline: 5 December 2025)

Home Office – Extending the Right to Work Scheme (Deadline: 10 December 2025)

Department for Business and Trade – Unlocking business: reform driven by you (Deadline: 16 December 2025)

Department for Business and Trade – Make Work Pay: trade union right of access (Deadline: 18 December 2025)

Department for Business and Trade – Make Work Pay: duty to inform workers of right to join a union (Deadline: 18 December 2025)

Department for Science, Innovation and Technology – AI Growth Lab (Deadline: 2 January 2026)

Industry and Regulators Committee – Regulators and growth (Deadline: 9 January 2026)

Treasury Committee – Financial Inclusion Strategy (Deadline: 12 January 2026)

Department for Business and Trade – Make Work Pay: leave for bereavement including pregnancy loss (Deadline: 15 January 2026)

Department for Business and Trade – British Industrial Competitiveness Scheme: consultation on scheme eligibility and approach (Deadline: 19 January 2026)

Justice and Home Affairs Committee – Settlement, Citizenship and Integration (Deadline: 23 January 2026)

Office for National Statistics – Census 2031 Topic Consultation (Deadline: 4 February 2026)

HM Treasury – Business Rates and Investment: Call for Evidence (Deadline: 18 February 2026)

Department for Business and Trade – Business support for co-operatives and non-financial mutuals (Deadline: 18 February 2026)

Department for Education – International student levy technical detail (Deadline: 18 February 2026)

Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and HM Treasury – Visitor levy in England (Deadline: 18 February 2026)

HM Treasury – Tax Support for Entrepreneurs: Call for Evidence (Deadline: 28 February 2026)

HM Treasury – Reforming the customs treatment of low value imports into the United Kingdom (Deadline: 6 March 2026)

APPG for Entrepreneurship Newsletter: November 2025

This will be the last newsletter we send prior to Rachel Reeves stepping up to the Despatch Box and delivering her Autumn Budget. There may still be more than three weeks to go, but that hasn’t stopped Westminster from engaging in its usual parade of briefing and counterbriefing about what various interests want to hear the Chancellor say when 26 November finally rolls around. For our part, we’ll use this time to look into some of the ideas being bandied about that will hold the most significance for Britain’s entrepreneurial community.

Above all else, budgets are fiscal events. To simplify massively, that gives chancellors who preside over them two main dials to twiddle – one labelled ‘tax’, the other ‘spending’. It’s perhaps the worst-kept secret in Westminster right now that the tax one is set to be turned up. What will happen with spending has been subject to less speculation, but given the Government’s record of implementing cuts – or not – over the last year, it’s unlikely that major restraint is on the cards. With talk of needing to fill a £20 billion ‘black hole’ if the Chancellor is to meet her fiscal rules, something is going to have to give.

Amid all of the speculation, one factor looms large – Labour’s election promise to keep the rates of Income Tax, VAT and National Insurance Contributions on “working people” fixed. Given that these three taxes alone comprise almost two thirds of annual revenue to the Treasury, the pledge not to touch them ties more than a hand behind the Chancellor’s back. Inevitably, it’s leading to some creative thinking. Media reports suggest that officials believe the ‘working people’ caveat could give them the cover to raise taxes on those earning more than around £45,000 a year, while extending the current freeze on personal tax thresholds (due to expire by 2028) could net significant sums as people are dragged into higher tax bands, as would broadening out the VAT base.

The refusal to touch headline rates has also meant greater focus on other, smaller taxes that could be raised in order to generate revenue. A so-called ‘settling-up tax’ or ‘exit tax’ is under consideration according to numerous outlets, which would require people emigrating from the country to pay a 20% levy on their business assets, and thus prevent them from avoiding Capital Gains Tax. How seriously we should take this proposal is up for debate, though I defer to the ever-reliable tax guru Dan Neidle, who decidedly thinks not. (Incidentally, if you haven’t yet seen his discussion of whether the stick of an exit tax could have kept Revolut founder Nik Storonsky from departing our shores, make it the first thing you read after finishing this.)

Meanwhile, Capital Gains Tax is another moderately-sized tax that theoretically could be pushed up higher or see reforms to how it is levied – though the Chancellor will be wary given the fierce pushback from entrepreneurs when she pulled this move at the last Budget. Similar arguments could be levied at any changes to Inheritance Tax, as are being rumoured.

If it isn’t abundantly obvious by this point, what’s clear is that the Chancellor faces some incredibly challenging choices. Nobody could begrudge her commitment to balance the books, but viable options for doing so are thin on the ground. So far one word we haven’t mentioned though is growth. For any chancellor lucky enough to find some, economic growth can mask a multitude of fiscal sins. When businesses are booming, Treasury coffers fill up nicely. Pressures to curtail spending abate, and suddenly there’s more leeway for rationalising the tax system.

Unfortunately, unlike with tax and spending, there’s no magic dial Rachel Reeves can just turn to get more growth. Expanding the economy depends on countless decisions going right, and many other factors beyond any chancellor’s control. But where she does have influence, she should use it decisively (see below for some links in our Adviser Update for ways to do just that).

Britain’s entrepreneurs remain the country’s most effective engine of growth. If on 26 November the Chancellor gives them the space and stability to thrive, her fiscal conundrum will become that little bit easier to solve.

Adviser Update

Latest news, research and events from our Advisers

​​Startup Coalition shared their Budget submission. Read it here.

FBUK are hosting a Family Business Week Reception on the evening of the Autumn Budget at One Great George Street. Learn more here.

The Enterprise Research Centre published new research on the productivity costs associated with workplace mental health and wellbeing. Read it here.

They will also be convening their annual State of Small Business Britain Conference on Tuesday, 2 December. Learn more here.

The Entrepreneurs Network published their latest report, examining what young founders say they need to thrive. Read it here.

They will also be organising a meetup for entrepreneurial ecosystem builders in Oxford on Monday, 10 November. Learn more here.

In Parliament

Questions and comments relating to entrepreneurship this month

While discussing the Life Sciences Innovative Manufacturing Fund, Minister for AI and Online Safety Kanishka Narayan MP noted that:

“[D]espite the UK’s global leadership in many areas of life sciences manufacturing, we must acknowledge that, in recent years, growth in manufacturing sites and jobs has not kept pace with the expansion of the life sciences sector as a whole. That is why this summer the Government published the life sciences sector plan – a comprehensive strategy to ensure growth in all parts of the sector. The plan sets out the UK’s ambition to secure more life sciences foreign direct investment than any other European economy by 2030, behind only the US and China globally by 2035. Central to that ambition is boosting manufacturing through delivery of the life sciences innovative manufacturing fund, one of six headline commitments in the sector plan. Launched last October, the fund demonstrates this Government’s commitment to the continued growth of our life sciences sector, with up to £520 million of funding available to support private sector capital investments until 2030.”

On Ada Lovelace Day, Victoria Collins MP argued that:

“[F]ailing to empower women in STEM is a loss not just for women, but for all of us, and for science, innovation and the economy. That is why, when I started a tech company, the very first thing I did was look for mentors, because I felt that I could not do it without them. It was by interviewing and talking to so many great women that I felt inspired and able to move forward. Ada Lovelace stands as a shining example of a woman who shattered barriers, paving the way for modern science and innovation. However, far too many women like her have been erased from history. Rosalind Franklin’s image of DNA was crucial, yet the Nobel prize for that discovery went to three men. Esther Lederberg made breakthroughs in genetics that were overshadowed by her husband’s receipt of the Nobel. Dorothy Hodgkin’s scientific achievement was reported in the press under the headline “Oxford housewife wins Nobel”. She remains the only British woman to win a science Nobel prize. That is not good enough. The instrumental role of women in STEM needs to be celebrated everywhere.”

In a debate on Connected and Autonomous Vehicles, Sarah Coombes MP observed that:

“In the US, where the roll-out of autonomous vehicles and robotaxis is far ahead of here, the safety statistics on automated versus human-driven vehicles look impressive. Waymo, the Google-owned company that runs self-driving taxis there, claims that its vehicles have 80% fewer injury-causing crashes compared with the average human driver, but within the human average there will be drivers who are neither careful nor competent, so these figures are quite hard to compare. What progress has the Minister made on expanding the safety expectations for automated and connected vehicles, and what is the timeline on the remaining regulations that need to be set out? Furthermore, what do the Government hope the safety gains from automated vehicles could be? Proving the reliability and safety of automated vehicles is essential for public acceptance of this new technology. Lots of people might feel reticent to get in a self-driving car because they do not feel safe, but I found my own experience yesterday in a Wayve autonomous vehicle reassuring. During the journey, we had cyclists jumping red lights, pedestrians walking out on to the road and other drivers cutting across our right of way. The car dealt with it all. The whole journey felt safe and smooth the whole time. Some critics say that these cars cannot handle British roundabouts because they were made for American grid cities. I can confirm that the Wayve car handled the roundabouts with ease. We had a safety driver sat ready to take the wheel if any issues arose, but none did.”

Over in the Lords, Financial Secretary to the Treasury Lord Livermore told Peers:

“The Government will bring forward final legislation to create a financial services regulatory regime for crypto assets this year, which will include issuing qualifying stablecoin in the UK. This will provide crypto asset firms the regulatory certainty needed to invest and help drive innovation in our financial services sector, and at the same time ensure that customers are protected from the worst harms when they make use of crypto asset services.”

Lord Livermore also used a debate on GDP Per Capita to declare:

“[W]e are in a global race for talent, with many countries seeking to improve the attractiveness of their immigration systems for highly talented individuals. The immigration White Paper announced that the Government will review the visa offer for highly talented individuals by expanding the high potential individual visa and reforming the global talent and innovator founder visas. We have also agreed that we will work towards an ambitious youth mobility scheme with the EU, creating maximum economic and cultural opportunities between the UK and the EU. Any scheme would give young Brits the opportunity to travel, to experience other cultures and to work and study abroad.”

In a debate on the Employment Rights Bill, Lord Hunt of Wirral criticised the legislation:

“Under these new so-called union access rights, small businesses already struggling with costs, labour shortages and regulation will now face inspectors at their doors; refuse entry and they face thousands of pounds in fines. What a message to the entrepreneurs, builders and wealth creators who keep this country moving.”

Looking Forward

Consultations and calls for evidence from government departments and Select Committees

Competition and Markets Authority – Revised merger remedies guidance (Deadline: Thursday, 13 November 2025)

Business and Trade Committee – Priorities of the Business and Trade Committee for 2026 (Deadline: Friday, 14 November 2025)

Economic Affairs Committee – The UK’s fiscal framework (Deadline: Monday, 1 December 2025)

Home Office – Extending the Right to Work Scheme (Deadline: Wednesday, 10 December 2025)

Department for Business and Trade – Unlocking business: reform driven by you (Deadline: Tuesday, 16 December 2025)

Department for Business and Trade – Make Work Pay: trade union right of access (Deadline: Thursday, 18 December 2025)

Department for Business and Trade – Make Work Pay: duty to inform workers of right to join a union (Deadline: Thursday, 18 December 2025)

Department for Science, Innovation and Technology – AI Growth Lab (Deadline: Friday, 2 January 2026)

Department for Business and Trade – Make Work Pay: leave for bereavement including pregnancy loss (Deadline: Thursday, 15 January 2026)

Office for National Statistics – Census 2031 Topic Consultation (Deadline: Wednesday, 4 February 2026)

APPG for Entrepreneurship Newsletter: October 2025

Having kicked off in early September, the 2025 party conference season – for most of us – is just about wrapping up. Congratulations to everyone who has soldiered through to this point.

Perhaps I’m speaking for myself, but one of the best aspects of these annual gatherings is the chance to see politics in action, well removed from the usual trappings of the Westminster bubble. Only yesterday, as I was ordering a pint outside the Conservative Party’s secure zone in Manchester, a bewildered local asked me why on Earth thousands of besuited people had descended on his favourite pub for the last few days. After giving my best explanation, he still seemed bemused as to the point of it all. And I think he’s right to wonder: what is the point of party conferences?

The answer will depend on who you ask. From raising campaign funds to simply giving loyal party members a chance to unwind, conferences mean many things to many people. Of course, one of the more important aspects, for our purposes at least, is the opportunity they provide to set (or re-set) the policy debate. That then begs another question: what did we learn on this front?

As the party in power, it seems only right to begin with Labour. With the Chancellor Rachel Reeves due to give her Autumn Budget next month, there were understandably fewer concrete policies than we might otherwise have expected from her speech in Liverpool. But her assertion that “[i]n the months ahead, we will face further tests, with the choices to come made all the harder by harsh global headwinds” was seen by many as a thinly veiled hint that tax rises are on the horizon. What we can probably put to bed, however, is the idea that any increases will come in the shape of wealth taxes. After being suggested by various quarters for a good portion of the summer, Prime Minister Keir Starmer used his speech to call out their folly – branding them as a snake-oil ‘solution’. Meanwhile, newly installed Business Secretary Peter Kyle made it crystal clear that the Employment Rights Bill would be moving forward “in full,” shutting down speculation that it might be pared back after its chief architect Angela Rayner resigned from Cabinet earlier in September.

Down the road in Manchester, the Conservatives were setting out their stall. Whether consciously playing for the entrepreneur vote or not, Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride began his speech by paying homage to Silicon Valley, saying: “It really is a different world over there. The innovation, the dynamism, the constant yearning for faster, better, stronger.” How we might replicate some of that energy within our own shores, he suggested, lies in fiscal responsibility – with Stride pledging to reduce the tax burden on business owners, paid for by trimming public spending by almost £50 billion. Elsewhere, Shadow Energy Secretary Claire Coutinho said that a future Conservative Government would make delivering cheap, abundant energy an industrial priority – promising to repeal the Climate Change Act in order to do that – and Shadow Business Secretary Andrew Griffith announced a package of measures to support the self-employed – including reforms to HMRC and IR35, and making it easier for entrepreneurs to open bank accounts. (N.B. Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch will deliver her speech tomorrow morning.)

In Bournemouth, Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey used his keynote to champion his party’s internationalist values, saying that “there is no serious strategy for restoring economic growth that doesn’t involve rebuilding Britain’s relationship with Europe.” He also advocated for a wider coalition of nations, including the likes of Canada and other Commonwealth countries, to band together to counter the effects of Donald Trump’s tariffs. Seasoned politicos will know that the Liberal Democrats also use their annual conference as a moment for party members to vote on policy motions. Their ‘Policy Review’ was published, which vowed to rigorously examine how to better support “start-ups and scale-ups, small and growing businesses, entrepreneurs and the self-employed, given how important they are for realising our vision for an innovative, dynamic and prosperous economy.”

Meanwhile, noisy newcomers Reform held their get-together in Birmingham. Nigel Farage explained that now is the time for the party to take their next steps, and formally handed responsibility to their ex-entrepreneur Chairman Zia Yusuf to beef up policy development – especially in areas like business policy. Though we will have to wait and see what the results of that might be, during their conference promises were made to scrap decarbonisation measures, while Farage hailed the ‘DOGE’ work that was being undertaken by Reform-led councils as a model to save taxpayer money.

Though the parties might differ in their policy prescriptions, all are united in the diagnosis that Britain’s economy ought to be doing better than it currently is. Here at the APPG for Entrepreneurship, we’ll be unstinting in making the evidence-backed case for ways we think can genuinely support the growth of Britain’s startups to deliver on that objective.

Adviser Update

Latest news, research and events from our Advisers

Innovation Growth Lab is currently running a survey of policymakers across the EU and UK to explore perceptions towards policy innovation and evaluation. Learn more and fill it out here.

Campaign for Science and Engineering published a briefing document, collating insights from 15 research organisations demonstrating the barriers they face in the UK visa system. Read it in full here.

The British Chambers of Commerce released their latest findings on how small- and medium-sized enterprises are using AI technology. Read it in full here.

FBUK are hosting a speed briefing for all MPs and Lords on 28 October to discuss policy issues relating to family businesses and to discuss how parliamentarians can be involved with Family Business Week at the end of November. Contact Matthew Jaffa at FBUK here for more details.

The Entrepreneurs Network opened their Entrepreneurs Survey for responses. If you’re a founder and haven’t yet filled it out, you can do so here – but don’t delay, it closes soon!

In Parliament

Questions and comments relating to entrepreneurship this month

Shadow Business Secretary Andrew Griffith criticised the Government over figures suggesting a decline in the number of hospitality businesses:

“[B]ehind every one of those numbers is a story: a family, a striver, a risk taker, an entrepreneur, a community or a high street whose life is being sucked out of it by this Government. Hospitality is where the character of our nation lives, in the welcome of a restaurant host, the laughter in a dining room and the clink of a glass, and it is the fact that that life that is being extinguished that is so tragic.

In a Lords debate on the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist argued that reforms must be made to bring new nuclear power generation online quicker and less expensively:

“The need for energy security is no longer a theoretical debate. It is a strategic imperative. We are presiding over the highest offshore wind auction prices in a decade, demand for electricity is rising rapidly and the UK is still overly reliant on imported energy sources. The last nuclear power station to come online in this country was in 1995. Hinkley Point C, the only one under construction, is now set to become the most expensive power station in history, not because the technology is flawed – far from it – but because of bureaucracy. We have witnessed the absurdity of eight years of negotiations to install 288 underwater loudspeakers – the infamous fish disco – to deter a trawler’s worth of fish from swimming into the water intake system. This amendment would put an end to that: no more paperwork that chokes innovation and pushes up costs, but rather a more proportionate environmental impact assessment regime that will give a level playing field to the UK nuclear industry.”

When asked whether any more legislation to regulate artificial intelligence would be forthcoming, the newly appointed Science, Innovation and Technology Secretary Liz Kendall replied:

“I want to ensure that people, businesses and creatives throughout the country can benefit from the huge opportunities that technological developments in AI promise, and that people are protected, too. It is early days in this job, and I am listening carefully to all those involved, but wherever action is required, I will take it.”

Lord Livermore defended the Government’s plans to roll out Making Tax Digital and explained what steps it is taking to ease the burden on businesses:

“HMRC has taken a range of steps to ensure that the adoption costs of Making Tax Digital are kept to a minimum, including working with industry to ensure that there is free and low-cost software available where necessary. The use of Making Tax Digital should bring significant benefits by increasing accuracy, reducing the time it takes to complete tax returns, and therefore increasing productivity.”

In a debate on youth unemployment, Baroness Sherlock set out how the Government is approaching the impact artificial intelligence is having on the labour market:

“We are starting to witness the impact of AI in the labour market, but there is uncertainty over the scale of that impact, especially over the next four years. The Government are planning against a range of plausible future outcomes. A lot of work is going into this in government. Most forecasters project that, in the end, AI will lead to a net increase in employment but with varying impacts across different sectors and for different people. When you get this kind of change and churn in the labour market, the people who lose out most are those at the margins. Our job is to try to make sure that we give those who would otherwise not succeed the skills to do so. For example, the Government are investing to transform apprenticeships and looking at more shorter courses and ways to give young people a chance to gain skills in new areas, such as digital and AI. We are conscious of it and are very much working on it.”

Looking Forward

Consultations and calls for evidence from government departments and Select Committees

Science, Innovation and Technology Committee – Life sciences investment (Deadline: Monday, 13 October 2025)

International Agreements Committee – UK-India Free Trade Agreement (Deadline: Tuesday, 14 October 2025)

Cabinet Office – Consultation on the NSI Act Notifiable Acquisition Regulations (Deadline: Tuesday, 14 October 2025)

Department for Science, Innovation and Technology – Proposals to update the Telecommunications Security Code of Practice 2022 (Deadline: Wednesday, 22 October 2025)

Department for Business and Trade – Late payments: tackling poor payment practices (Deadline: Thursday, 23 October 2025)

Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government – Consultation on streamlining infrastructure planning (Deadline: Monday, 27 October 2025)

Business and Trade Committee – Priorities of the Business and Trade Committee for 2026 (Deadline: Friday, 14 November 2025)

APPG for Entrepreneurship Newsletter: September 2025

When is a reshuffle not a reshuffle? Despite rumours that Prime Minister Keir Starmer would start the autumn off with a reorganisation of his top team, what we eventually got was a rather more subdued affair. Congratulations and best wishes are nonetheless due for Darren Jones MP, who now occupies the newly created position of Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister; for James Murray MP, who will move into Jones’ former role as Chief Secretary to the Treasury; and to Dan Tomlinson MP, who will fill the empty shoes left by Murray as Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury.

Meanwhile, though not an MP, also making moves was the economist John van Reenen. After Labour won the 2024 General Election, the Chancellor Rachel Reeves installed van Reenen as the Chair of her Council of Economic Advisers. He will now report directly to Reeves as an expert adviser, drawing on his extensive academic background investigating the determinants of economic growth and innovation.

Entrepreneurs and enjoyers of higher living standards alike should welcome his appointment. If I can indulge in a little anecdata, a quick search of my inbox finds that it’s littered with emails from people on all sides of the political debate positively citing studies van Reenen has authored – whether they’re on the importance of good management, the root causes that influence who becomes an entrepreneur, or where innovative spillovers actually come from. (For those with enough time on their hands, you can find all of his publications on his website here.)

One piece of research that has stuck with me over the years is his 2019 paper A Toolkit of Policies to Promote Innovation. Written with the equally distinguished Nicholas Bloom and Heidi Williams, this paper quickly yet comprehensively makes the case for why governments should support endeavours to promote innovation, before evaluating some of the most common ways they try to do so. Specifically, they examine tax policies to favour research and development, government research grants, policies aimed at increasing the supply of human capital focused on innovation, intellectual property policies, and pro-competitive policies.

They conclude with the neat little table featured below, which summarises the evidence base for different approaches to advancing innovation. As one can see, they reserve high praise for R&D tax credits, efforts to boost skilled immigration, and increasing the level of competition both within and between markets. They are altogether less enthusiastic about ‘patent boxes’ (which they dub “an example of a harmful form of tax competition that distorts the tax system under the guise of being a pro-innovation policy”), and they take an uncertain view on reforming intellectual property rules.

Source: A Toolkit of Policies to Promote Innovation

As van Reenen and his co-authors note, their assessments are only subjective, and “others will undoubtedly take different views on the policies listed.” As far as I’m concerned, however, their analysis is rigorous, persuasive, and more than worthy of close attention from any government.

One of the primary reasons why we run the APPG for Entrepreneurship is to better educate parliamentarians about key economic concepts relating to the startup world, innovation, and the economy at large. Only by sifting fact from fiction can policies be crafted that genuinely make a difference. Part of how we do that is by drawing on the insights of people like van Reenen who dedicate their lives to understanding what really makes an economy tick. With the Autumn Budget just around the corner, let’s hope he can hit the ground running in his new role.

Adviser Update

Latest news, research and events from our Advisers

Enterprise Nation’s Daniel Woolf explains why America scrapping its de minimis threshold is “another kick in the shins” for Britain’s small businesses. (If you haven’t subscribed already, they also have a new newsletter which is well worth signing up for.)

The Enterprise Investment Scheme Association is hosting a string of events up and down the country as part of its Ready, Steady, Grow 2025 series. Find out where your closest one to attend is by clicking here.

The Entrepreneurs Network has opened their Entrepreneurs Survey for responses – if you’re a founder, it takes less than ten minutes to make your voice heard on the key issues that impact you most.

They are also organising a roundtable all about making R&D tax credits work better. If you’re free on the morning of Thursday 25 September and have expertise to share on the subject, request a place here.

In Parliament

Questions and comments relating to entrepreneurship this month

Nothing to report! Both Houses of Parliament have been in recess since our last newsletter. Normal service for this section will resume next month.

Looking Forward

Consultations and calls for evidence from government departments and Select Committees

Joint Committee on Human Rights – Human Rights and the Regulation of AI (Deadline: Friday, 5 September 2025)

Science, Innovation and Technology Committee – Innovation and global food security (Deadline: Sunday, 7 September 2025)

Competition and Markets Authority – Draft guidance for businesses on price transparency (Deadline: Monday, 8 September 2025)

HM Treasury – FS Sector Strategy: Regulatory Environment - Cross-Cutting Reforms (Deadline: Tuesday, 9 September 2025)

Business and Trade Committee – Financing the real economy (Deadline: Friday, 12 September 2025)

Financial Services Regulation Committee – Growth of private markets in the UK following reforms introduced after 2008 (Deadline: Thursday, 18 September 2025)

Office for Digital Identities and Attributes and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology – Adoption of trust services: call for views (Deadline: Saturday, 20 September 2025)

Competition and Markets Authority – Revised draft markets regime guidance (Deadline: Wednesday, 1 October 2025)

Cabinet Office – Consultation on the NSI Act Notifiable Acquisition Regulations (Deadline: Tuesday, 14 October 2025)

Department for Science, Innovation and Technology – Proposals to update the Telecommunications Security Code of Practice 2022 (Deadline: Wednesday, 22 October 2025)

Department for Business and Trade – Late payments: tackling poor payment practices (Deadline: Thursday, 23 October 2025)

Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government – Consultation on streamlining infrastructure planning (Deadline: Monday, 27 October 2025)

APPG for Entrepreneurship Newsletter: August 2025

Prosperity has many parents, but perhaps one of the most important variables for long-run economic growth is a competitive business environment. When firms are forced to vie for customers, their standards increase, product offerings widen, and costs fall.

Competition, too, comprises a range of determining factors. How easy or difficult it is to establish a business, however, must surely rank as one of the more consequential. While it would be wrong to simply equate competition as a measure of how many firms there are in any given market, as a rule of thumb, anything that makes it easier for new businesses to start up and begin challenging incumbents is probably going to be a good thing.

Here in Britain, we can pat ourselves on the back for doing a reasonably good job at fostering conditions that are conducive to people starting new companies. Excluding micronations, Britain ranks third after only Estonia and Hong Kong in terms of new business density, and we have much higher total early-stage entrepreneurial activity rate than many other European countries and comparator economies like Japan or Australia.

Important as it is for competition that entrepreneurs can launch startups, it counts for little if they are unable to stay above water and grow into productive businesses. Industry incumbents will not necessarily feel the invisible hand of competition on their shoulders if challengers stand little chance of maturing into serious threats.

Successive governments have long tried to make life easier for entrepreneurs to start small businesses and ensure they can fulfil their growth potential. The latest endeavour in this mission was the publication last week of the Small Business Strategy.

Sixty-two pages long and accompanied by annexes for the evidence underpinning it and the policies it sets out, the Strategy leaves little ground uncovered – from access to finance, to skills provision, to regulatory reform, to action on late payments, to our approach to international trade. It’s beyond the scope of this single newsletter to comprehensively cover off on all of the pledged policy changes, but a few stand out as worthy of closer inspection – particularly those that are of most relevance to the sort of high-growth potential startups that we index towards as an APPG.

Access to capital. One of the Strategy’s headline announcements was that more funding would be made available for Startup Loans, and the eligibility criteria would also be expanded. An estimated 69,000 more loans will be issued over the next four years thanks to this measure. Last year the British Business Bank published an evaluation of the Start Up Loans scheme, which found that recipients experienced higher survival rates than comparator businesses, as well as higher growth in both assets and employment.

One category of startups that can particularly struggle to get the capital they need is those whose business models are based on intellectual property. This is because unlike a factory or machinery, intangible capital like ideas, brands and processes are harder to secure lending against. Solving this challenge has preoccupied economists for some years, and now the Government is throwing its weight behind efforts to find a solution. It promised to “work closely with industry, financial institutions, and regulators to address regulatory and non-regulatory barriers to lending to IP-intensive SMEs,” and noted that: “the British Business Bank and the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) will explore how to best support lending to IP-intensive firms and encourage new IP-backed lending products. We will publish an update on this work and the next steps by the end of the year.”

Access to skills. Even with the right capital in place, small businesses can’t grow without the right skills to take advantage of it. At a time when technologies like artificial intelligence show promise of radically reshaping labour markets, it’s critical that workers have the capabilities to turn that transformation into a positive rather than a negative. In the Strategy, the Government promised to introduce short courses designed in partnership with Skills England, which will also carry out an authoritative assessment of national and regional skills needs.

To complement home grown skills, the Strategy also acknowledges the fact that small businesses also require international talent – and to that end lists a series of ways the Government will work to simplify visa routes for highly-skilled individuals who wish to contribute towards growing Britain’s economy,

Access to government. Recent years have seen considerable changes with respect to making it easier for small businesses to sell into government. To double down on the steps taken in the Procurement Act 2023, the Government will: “launch an SME Procurement Education programme to equip SMEs with the knowledge and tools to navigate the new procurement landscape, enhance their competitiveness, and increase their chances of securing public sector contracts.” It also noted that it has been piloting a system of new AI tools to quality assure statements of work and provide better feedback to small businesses, which should help entrepreneurs when bidding for public contracts. The first tool is due to be rolled out in Autumn 2025.

Access to markets. As well as selling into government, selling overseas can also be a vital way for small businesses to grow. There is strong evidence of the productivity gains that firms can make when they begin exporting, too. Another of the Strategy’s headline intentions is to facilitate more international trade from Britain’s small businesses. As well as seeking dedicated ‘SME chapters’ in future trade agreements, the Government will aim to increase the number of small businesses that receive UK Export Finance (UKEF) to 1,000 SMEs per year by 2029. To help do this a new, more efficient and accessible Export Insurance Product has been launched, and UKEF’s overall capacity will increase by £20 billion to a total of £80 billion.

Research Request

We’re working on our latest project – compiling an ‘A to Z of Entrepreneurship’ to demystify key concepts, jargon and policies relating to entrepreneurship. Think ‘A’ for Accelerators, ‘B’ for Business Asset Disposal Relief, or ‘C’ for ‘Companies House’.

We’re crowdsourcing ideas for each letter, so if you think there’s something in the world of entrepreneurship that needs to be explained better, do get in touch – we might even ask you to write it up for us.

Adviser Update
Latest news, research and events from our Advisers

The Enterprise Investment Scheme Association is hosting a string of events up and down the country as part of its Ready, Steady, Grow 2025 series. Find out where your closest one to attend is by clicking here.

The Campaign for Science and Engineering released a report mapping the economic returns of R&D, and also analysed how public investment in R&D is divided up.

The Entrepreneurs Network published a report looking at how government-backed support schemes for startups – like accelerators and incubators – could be made more effective. Read it in full by clicking here.

In Parliament
Questions and comments relating to entrepreneurship this month

In a Lords debate on the Employment Rights Bill, Lord Pitkeathley said:

“AI is happening, regardless of how we feel about it, and the opportunity it provides makes it all the more important that firms are based and regulated here rather than elsewhere. Jobs in this area tend to be highly skilled and well paid, but that does not mean workers do not need some protections. In many cases, the things that matter most are not issues such as minimum wage and paid leave but how easily people can move between companies, start their own ventures and work across several fast-growing enterprises. Here, it is non-compete agreements which pose a particular challenge. Understandable concerns over safeguarding intellectual property have led some firms to restrict employee movement, yet this comes at a cost to innovation, competition and the free flow of ideas that underpin these industries. I know the last Government carried out a review of these clauses in general terms, but no meaningful reform followed. Does the department have a view on how widespread these clauses now are, particularly in fast-moving and competitive sectors? Has any formal assessment been made of their impact on innovation, start-up activity, and people’s ability to move freely and fairly between roles?”

In the same debate, Lord Moynihan said:

“Platform employers are investing hundreds of millions in their activities per country, per platform employer, in other countries around the world, yet are not doing so here in the UK. One platform company recently contacted me to say that they had withheld £170 million of investment from this country precisely because of this Bill and the threats it imposes on it. We are falling further and further behind other modern economies, and it is precisely because of ever-increasing taxes and regulation, and the threat of more to come, from this and future mooted Bills. Removing the middle-stage worker status would both increase unemployment and deter further inward investment.”

Speaking in a debate on the Pension Schemes Bills, APPG for Entrepreneurship Member Callum Anderson MP said:

“The UK has long needed catalysts for a modern economic renaissance. The Government have taken important first steps through their industrial and infrastructure strategies, the artificial intelligence opportunities action plan and the reforms of our planning system, but the common ingredient that is required to ensure their success is a reliable source of long-term capital. Even a modest rebalancing of that £3 trillion could unlock billions in investment for domestic growth. In real currency that our constituents can understand, that means investment in digital, physical and social infrastructure, and it means greater opportunities for entrepreneurs to not only start up businesses but scale them into something globally consequential, providing better jobs and higher incomes for families throughout the country.”

When debating Primary Stock Exchange Listings, Baroness Bowles said:

“In addition to the pull of US investors, does the Minister recognise that there are push factors making the UK a hostile environment for innovative, high-tech growth companies? There are neither public nor private sector customers, as the chair of GSK told our Science and Technology Committee recently. Excessive government retention of IP exploitation rights in procurement and grant contracts undermines companies’ growth prospects. We are 45 years behind the US, which ended such emasculating IP contract terms in the Bayh–Dole Act, leading to the boom in revenue-producing high-tech companies and university spinoffs. Will HMT put its weight behind the economic benefit and long-term value for money that growth-friendly licensing contracts would have? Will the Minister meet to discuss these and how the UK can get its own Bayh–Dole effect?”

In a debate on London’s contribution to the national economy, Danny Beales MP said:

“There is a growing view that London should take a back seat in investment compared with other parts of the economy, but that is a false economy. When London grows, other regions grow too. The links between regions and nations in the United Kingdom are clear in terms of jobs, tax revenues, exports and supply chains. I remember being the cabinet member for the economy and regeneration in Camden for seven years, when I was involved, to my pleasure, in the knowledge quarter developing around life sciences, tech and AI, with huge multinational businesses, spin-outs and start-ups. It was not just a story about the growth of London and King’s Cross; businesses there were connected to the Cambridge and Oxfordshire arc, and places such as Leeds and other northern cities. Growth in the knowledge quarter benefited the whole UK economy. That is true of so many of London’s economic growth clusters.”

Looking Forward
Consultations and calls for evidence from government departments and Select Committees

Joint Committee on Human Rights – Human Rights and the Regulation of AI (Deadline: Friday, 5 September 2025)

Cabinet Office – Public Procurement: Growing British Industry, Jobs and Skills - Consultation on Further Reforms to Public Procurement (Deadline: Friday, 5 September)

Science, Innovation and Technology Committee – Innovation and global food security (Deadline: Sunday, 7 September 2025)

Competition and Markets Authority – Draft guidance for businesses on price transparency (Deadline: Monday, 8 September 2025)

HM Treasury – Financial Services Sector Strategy: Regulatory Environment - Cross-Cutting Reforms (Deadline: Tuesday, 9 September 2025)

Business and Trade Committee – Financing the real economy (Deadline: Friday, 12 September 2025)

Financial Services Regulation Committee – Growth of private markets in the UK following reforms introduced after 2008 (Deadline: Thursday, 18 September 2025)

Office for Digital Identities and Attributes and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology – Adoption of trust services: call for views (Deadline: Saturday, 20 September 2025)

Cabinet Office – Consultation on the NSI Act Notifiable Acquisition Regulations (Deadline: Tuesday, 14 October 2025)

Department for Business and Trade – Late payments: tackling poor payment practices (Deadline: Thursday, 23 October 2025)

APPG for Entrepreneurship Newsletter: July 2025

The Government’s Modern Industrial Strategy, published last week, spans 160 pages of ambition – a 10-year plan pledging to make the UK “the best country to invest in” by boosting eight priority sectors, cutting costs and driving innovation. It strikes a lot of the right notes: long-term vision, cross-government effort and partnership with business. But, as any seasoned entrepreneur, policymaker or policy observer knows, long strategy documents are the easy part. This month, we take a look at what needs to go right for the strategy to really deliver.

A consistent Achilles’ heel of past industrial strategies was political continuity. Strategies come and go with alarming speed – the 2017 Industrial Strategy was replaced in 2021, for example, by a new Plan for Growth. As the Industrial Strategy Council’s final annual report noted, a successful strategy needs “scale, longevity and policy co-ordination” across government. The new plan commits to a 10-year horizon and more policy stability. But even a 10-year plan can be quietly shelved if a new Prime Minister or party shifts priorities.

This is not a hypothetical worry. In science and technology policy, we have already cycled from 2012’s Eight Great Technologies, to 2017’s Grand Challenges, to 2021’s Seven Technology Families, and then 2023’s Five Critical Technologies.

If this Industrial Strategy is to avoid the same fate, it should survive beyond one political cycle. In other words, success hinges on turning the strategy into a durable, non-partisan project rather than the latest shiny initiative destined to be renamed or dismantled in a couple of years.

Another ingredient for success is cross-government coherence. This strategy cuts across energy, planning, skills, finance, and more – meaning that every relevant department needs to pull in the same direction.

Achieving regulatory coherence is equally critical. The strategy promises to streamline planning approvals, speed up infrastructure projects and cut the energy costs that burden industry. These are welcome steps. As the Industrial Strategy itself acknowledges, our industrial electricity prices have been among the highest in Europe, with energy-intensive firms paying roughly twice the European average last year.

A notable feature of the new Industrial Strategy is its blend of horizontal interventions (economy-wide fixes like infrastructure, skills and cheaper energy) and vertical interventions (targeted support for selected sectors and technologies). The Government has identified eight high-growth sectors (and 37 specific frontier industries within them) deemed crucial for the UK’s future. Done right, concentrating resources on areas of comparative advantage could drive innovation in fields like clean energy, life sciences and AI.

Balance is key, and walking the line between enabling all businesses and supporting select industries will be a defining challenge. The new strategy will need to deliver on the horizontal basics – from affordable energy to a skilled workforce – that benefit the broad business community, while also executing the vertical bets shrewdly. One encouraging sign is that the plan emphasises providing stability and 10-year commitments in areas like R&D, infrastructure and local growth to give businesses confidence to invest. If government can truly maintain stable policy support, it may embolden industry players to commit long-term to the targeted sectors.

The Industrial Strategy repeatedly stresses “partnership” with business and sets ambitious investment targets for industry. The success metrics also bank on a response from the private sector: the eight priority sectors are expected to ramp up investment sharply over the next decade – headline targets for advanced manufacturing, clean energy, and professional and business services alone add tens of billions. Taken together, the sector ambitions imply over £100 billion in new private investment by 2035.

For this strategy to work, business leaders need to believe in it. Government can prime the pump with public funding and favourable policies, but it’s companies and investors that will have to seize opportunities, scale up and create jobs. That means they need confidence that the UK will remain a stable, attractive place to invest not just this year, but for many years to come. It also means government must be responsive to industry realities: consulting on regulatory changes, ensuring skills initiatives meet employers’ needs and acknowledging when something isn’t working.

As always, we’re keen to hear your views. What conditions do you think will decide the fate of this Industrial Strategy? Are you optimistic about its impact on the entrepreneurial landscape, or do you remain sceptical?

Adviser Update
Latest news, research and events from our Advisers

The Centre for Entrepreneurs has launched a survey to take the pulse of the startup support landscape. They would like to hear from a broad range of startup support providers.

The ERC and National Enterprise Network held a roundtable in June on how to improve data on the UK’s 1.2 million micro businesses. A new working group is being set up to take this forward — get in touch if you’d like to be involved.

The ERC will launch a report from its research on workplace mental health on Wednesday 24 September at The Shard. Get in touch to register interest.

The latest policy paper from the Venture Capital Trust Association covers new proposals for the extension or reform of the VCT scheme rules.

A new online hub has been launched to support start-up engagement with Local Skills Improvement Plans – the employer-led skills strategies underpinning the Industrial Strategy.

The Entrepreneurs Network published the first wave of results from their Entrepreneurs Survey, offering insights into what founders really think about the state of the economy.

In Parliament
Questions and comments relating to entrepreneurship this month

In a debate on VAT registration thresholds, Peter Bedford said:

“England, and indeed the UK, is a nation of entrepreneurs. Across the UK, early risers and late-night grafters—the men and women who channel their entrepreneurial spirits into businesses and serving their communities—form the backbone of our economy. However, we in this place sometimes let them down. That is certainly the case with the current nonsensical VAT registration threshold. Right now, businesses in the UK have to be VAT registered when their turnover reaches just £90,000—an arbitrary figure. Once a small business has crossed that cliff edge, it is hit with added regulatory compliance costs and the need to charge their customers 20% more for their services.”

When asked about the steps his Department is taking to support entrepreneurs, Gareth Thomas responded:

“The Government continue to support entrepreneurs through start-up loans via the British Business Bank and through programmes such as growth hubs in England and “Help to Grow: Management” training across the UK. Later this year we will publish our small and medium-sized enterprise strategy, one key element of which will be to signal our determination to do even more to champion our entrepreneurs, including through a new vision for business support, built around the coming business growth service.”

In a Lords debate on corporate liquidations, Lord Leong said:

“Failure is a reality of business. Even major firms such as Ted Baker, The Body Shop and Wilko have collapsed. We should be thinking about how to support these corporate failures. We must have a more robust system, whether it is the credit system that needs reforming or even British banks. We must incorporate the American culture. Yes, we have to address failures, but more important is how we get up, dust ourselves down and get on to the business market again.”

In a Lords debate on AI and Creative Technologies (Communications and Digital Committee Report), Baroness Wheatcroft said:

“We took evidence from a wide base, including some really exciting and enthusiastic entrepreneurs. They were by no means unanimously critical of the environment they found themselves in, and their asks were not greedy. The loudest call, echoing that of a decade earlier, was the one that the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, referred to: the spaghetti of different grants and apparent help that would be on offer if they could access it. Some of them told us that in fact they had to pay consultants to help them find a way through the morass of stuff that was on offer and, by the time that they had done the sums, it was just easier and more cost effective to manage without.”

Looking Forward
Consultations and calls for evidence from government departments and Select Committees

HM Treasury – Consultation on the VAT Treatment of Business Donations of Goods to Charity (Deadline: 21 July)

HM Revenue and Customs – Modernisation of the Stamp Taxes on Shares Framework – 1.5% charge (Deadline: Monday, 21 July)

House of Commons Home Affairs Committee – Harnessing the Potential of New Digital Forms of Identification (Deadline: 21 August)

House of Commons Business and Trade Committee – Small Business Strategy (No fixed deadline)

House of Commons Business and Trade Committee – UK Trade with the US, India and EU (Deadline: 31 August)

Cabinet Office – Public Procurement: Growing British Industry, Jobs and Skills - Consultation on Further Reforms to Public Procurement (Deadline: 5 September)

APPG for Entrepreneurship Newsletter: June 2025

Politicians are extremely fond of singing the praises of small businesses, and they have every right – and incentive – to do so. With 5.5 million businesses classified as ‘small’ – employing fewer than 50 people – they account for 99.8% of all businesses in Britain. If you can think of a constituency that encompasses a greater share of its entire population than that, please do write in to let me know.

Thanks no doubt to their strength in numbers, small businesses receive adulation at every opportunity. A common theme seems to be the idea that more really is merrier. While I’ve no particular issue with more people having a go at starting out, when this becomes the only metric of success, we begin to lose sight of what really matters – whether any of these businesses become productivity engines.

Fortunately, an effort seems to be underway to correct the narrative. In the Enterprise Research Centre’s latest State of Small Business Britain report, they observe that the “number of start-ups in an economy is often used as a key indicator of business growth, but less attention tends to be given to the proportion of businesses that survive and go on to create healthy revenues.” They go on to add that: “ERC analysis has shown that the UK has a high proportion of start-ups that do not survive, and that only a small proportion of firms reach significant scaling milestones.” For all the plaudits Britain has received of late for incubating its startup ecosystem, the proportion of firms that startup and go on to turn over £1 million or more after three years has remained stubbornly persistent over the last decade – at around 2%.

Now that Britain has established itself as a place where just about anyone who wants to can start a business, we have to move beyond and examine what can be done to ensure promising businesses can grow to their full potential and deliver the sort of productivity gains that the country so sorely needs.

On this front, a recent article by the Financial Times’ Tej Parikh caught my attention. Contrary to a legion of speeches given and op eds written over the last decade or so, he concludes that Britain does not, in fact, suffer from the infamous ‘productivity puzzle’, but rather a policy puzzle. In his piece, Parikh cites testimonies from numerous experts who present the tangle of barriers to growth in Britain – dysfunctional planning policy, crippling energy costs, punishing marginal tax rates, slow diffusion of best practices and technology in businesses, and more. Thus, we now know all too well what holds us back, but we do not necessarily have politically workable solutions to these bottlenecks. (Pleasingly, one policy that Parikh notes which has managed to best the puzzle is ‘full expensing’ – for which we were one of the frontrunners in recommending, all the way back in 2018.)

Making progress on any of these growth impediments could pave the way for many more of the vast population of small businesses to break into the big (or at least medium) time. As understandable as it is that quintessentially small businesses capture the limelight, if we’re serious about growth, we need to focus as much on quality as quantity. Whether it’s through hard policy fixes or simply devoting more political bandwidth to it, legislators cannot ignore the fact that despite improvements in our entrepreneurial ecosystem, not every metric shows signs of success.

Adviser Update
Latest news, research and events from our Advisers

The Campaign for Science and Engineering (CaSE) is seeking two new trustees with expertise in either legal or financial matters. More details on the roles can be found on the CaSE website, and the deadline is 23:59 on Wednesday 4 June.

CaSE’s Policy Manager Camilla d’Angelo has also penned an analysis piece on the Immigration White Paper, which was released last month. Read it in full here.

The BVCA published Venture capital in the UK 2025, in which they document the scale of venture capital investment across the nations and regions of the UK.

The Entrepreneurs Network launched their Entrepreneurs Survey, with founders invited to make their voices heard on a variety of different issues. There is still time to complete it by clicking here.

They are also convening a handful of events in June – including a virtual roundtable on parenting and entrepreneurship, an evening meetup for foreign-born founders, a dinner with Allison Gardner MP for healthtech founders, and a networking event for climatetech founders.

In Parliament
Questions and comments relating to entrepreneurship this month

In a debate on the venture capital industry, Liberal Democrat Sarah Olney said:

“[W]hile our VC market is growing and strong, it is highly inequitable. For ethnic minorities, women and many other communities which there is either insufficient data or insufficient time to discuss today, our system of venture capital does not work. Businesses with founders from those communities receive a disproportionately lower percentage of VC deals and of total VC funding. With their priority of growth, the Government must do more to ensure that the venture capital market in the UK is inclusive and accessible.”

In a debate on business and the economy, Shadow Business Secretary Andrew Griffiths gave an impassioned defence of entrepreneurship:

“Running or investing in a business at its core is a profound act of human courage—the triumph of optimism over inertia, and a mindset of someone solving problems themselves rather than waiting for permission from others. It is about embracing risk knowing that there are no guarantees, no bail-outs and that no one is coming to the rescue. When enterprise succeeds, such people create the wealth that funds our public services. Every time a Minister dispenses money and largesse in Whitehall, as this Government are doing at record velocity, they can do so only because a founder, entrepreneur, or a businessman or businesswoman, took that leap.”

Over in the House of Lords, Baroness Stowell cautioned against the Employment Rights Bill:

“[T]he costs of hiring and firing are already much higher in the UK than anywhere else, which is putting UK businesses at a disadvantage. In the context of the Bill and the day-one rights around unfair dismissal, the Startup Coalition, which represents the start-ups, talked in its briefing note about the chilling effect that these day-one rights around hiring and firing would have on start-ups, seriously undermining their potential for growth. TechUK, which represents tech businesses of all sizes, has raised a lot of concerns about some of these day-one rights, but in the context of unfair dismissal, one of its concerns, which I do not think we have heard much about so far, is the risk of fraudulent claims.”

While debating the Strategic Defence Review, Defence Secretary John Healy reiterated the importance of innovation to national security:

“Ukraine also tells us that whoever gets new technology into the hands of their armed forces the fastest will have the advantage, so we will place Britain at the leading edge of innovation in NATO. We will double investment in autonomous systems in this Parliament, invest more than £1 billion to integrate our armed forces through a new digital targeting web, and finance a £400 million UK defence innovation organisation. To ensure that Britain gains the maximum benefit from what we invent and produce in this country, we will create a new defence exports office in the MOD, driving exports to our allies and driving growth at home.”

Looking Forward
Consultations and calls for evidence from government departments and Select Committees

House of Commons Public Accounts Committee – Governance and decision-making on major projects (Deadline: Thursday, 10 June)

HM Treasury – Alternative Investment Fund Managers Regulations consultation (Deadline: Monday, 9 June)

Office for Equality and Opportunity, the Race Equality Unit and the Disability Unit – Equality (Race and Disability) Bill: mandatory ethnicity and disability pay gap reporting (Deadline: Tuesday, 10 June)

Department for Work and Pensions – Pathways to Work: Reforming Benefits and Support to Get Britain Working Green Paper (Deadline: Monday, 30 June)

Low Pay Commission – Low Pay Commission consultation 2025 (Deadline: Monday, 30 June)

HM Revenue and Customs – Modernisation of the Stamp Taxes on Shares Framework – 1.5% charge (Deadline: Monday, 21 July)

APPG for Entrepreneurship Newsletter: May 2025

We’re so back. After a brief hiatus, I’m delighted to say that the APPG for Entrepreneurship is officially reconstituted, and raring to get going again. We’ve got a new Chair, new Officers, new Members and new Advisers, but our purpose remains resolutely the same – to ensure that Parliament is kept up-to-date on what is needed to create and sustain the most favourable conditions for entrepreneurship.

We’ve got a lot planned for the foreseeable future. We’ll continue to produce original research, host virtual and in-person events, convene key members of the entrepreneurial ecosystem and, of course, publish this monthly newsletter. And while we’ve got plenty of ideas of our own, we’re all ears for other proposals of what to focus on. If there’s an issue relating to entrepreneurship in any way, shape or form that you think is getting neglected in the policy world, do let us know.

Before writing this, I leafed through previous issues of the newsletter to refresh my memory of what we’ve covered before. There are the obvious things – reactions to political events like Budgets, Cabinet reshuffles and party conference seasons. Then there are the less run of the mill ones – looking into a specific issue or piece of research that caught my attention at the time. As the newsletter spools up again, I’m keen to lean more into the latter. Examples include whether entrepreneurship is contagious, to what extent countries have ‘brands’, the relationship between universities and startups, and the role local government can play in supporting innovation.

Without asking you to do my homework for me, all of this is to say that I’m also very much open to suggestions. Perhaps you’ve spotted something interesting that straddles the intersection of entrepreneurship and policymaking, whether it’s a formal research paper, snippet of data or even just an idle musing that deserves to have its tires kicked. Whatever it is, don’t hesitate to ping it my way.

By its very nature, this newsletter is not here to make divisive, sweeping pronouncements or come down definitively on a policy stance. Rather, I like to think of it as a place for issues and ideas to be entertained and scrutinised, bringing in different perspectives and hopefully constructively advancing debates forward.

We’re extremely excited to be up and running once again, and can’t wait to get back into the swing of things. All that remains to be said here is thank you for continuing to read the newsletter, and do please share it far and wide with whoever you think might find it useful to subscribe.

Adviser Update
Latest news, research and events from our Advisers

Today, our Secretariat, The Entrepreneurs Network, is heading up to Cambridge to bring the next generation of founders together as part of their Young Entrepreneurs Forum (RSVP here).

On 15 May, the ScaleUp Institute will be in Belfast to delve into the funding landscape and options to raise capital in 2025 and beyond (RSVP here).

In Parliament
Questions and comments relating to entrepreneurship this month

In the Commons, John Glen asked:

“Will the Prime Minister convene an urgent No. 10 summit with City leaders and the regulators to provide a reset and to maximise the chances that the City can lead economic growth and recovery in these times of grave uncertainty and turmoil?”

To which Keir Starmer responded:

“The right hon. Gentleman is right that we need to go further and faster in kick-starting growth and attracting the investment we need to create jobs, and that our regulators must regulate for growth and not just for risk. We do want that continuity of leadership that he mentioned, and we are convening and getting people together to drive growth. We will take away the ideas that he put on the table.”

During a debate on automation, John Slinger stood up for the robots:

“It is not the robots that we should be worried about; it is not building enough of them. I think it is safe to say that we are in the middle of the creation of – willing or otherwise – a new technological, industrial, defence, trading and perhaps even geopolitical paradigm right now. As it is being reforged, with the metal still molten, the need for home-grown advanced manufacturing and innovation is growing, as is the importance of improving productivity and unleashing innovation. I hope that in today’s debate I have spoken up for the robots and for automation, because they are not the dystopian usurpers of human inspiration and productive labour; they are, in fact, the enablers of it.”

In a debate on university funding, Rachel Maskell said:

“If we are going to realise the knowledge and scientific, innovative and technical opportunity that this country presents to the world, we must have a global outlook on the investment we must make into higher education. There have been many factors impacting universities, many of which we have heard. On international students, I urge the Minister to make representation to the Home Office to ensure that dependants can accompany academics and students as they come to this country, and that we look again at visa costs and NHS surcharges. That will enable people to come [to] our country to put in to it and bring benefits – including the economic benefit that we know has been deeply damaged with the change in visa rules.”

In the Lords, Lord Drayson observed:

“Less than 5% of UK pensions were invested in UK equities, the UK stock exchange had fallen to 21st place, level with Kazakhstan in world IPO rankings, and the talk in founder-entrepreneur circles was about how quickly they could move their companies to the US to escape the aversion to risk and lack of scale-up capital that exists in the UK.”

Looking Forward
Consultations and calls for evidence from government departments and Select Committees

House of Lords Science and Technology Committee – Financing and Scaling UK Science and Technology: Innovation, Investment, Industry (Deadline: Friday, 9 May)

House of Commons Energy Security and Net Zero Committee – National planning for energy infrastructure (Deadline: Monday, 12 May)

House of Commons Public Accounts Committee – UK Research and Innovation (Deadline: Thursday, 22 May)

House of Commons Public Accounts Committee – Collecting the right tax from wealthy individuals (Deadline: Thursday, 29 May)

House of Commons Public Accounts Committee – Governance and decision-making on major projects (Deadline: Thursday, 10 June)

Department for Business and Trade and HM Treasury – Small business access to finance (Deadline: Thursday, 8 May)

Competition and Markets Authority – Review of merger remedies approach (Deadline: Monday, 12 May)

Department for Energy Security and Net Zero and Ministry of Defence – Nuclear regulation: input to the Nuclear Regulatory Taskforce review (Deadline: Monday, 19 May)

HM Revenue and Customs – Research and Development tax relief advance clearances (Deadline: Monday, 26 May)

HM Treasury – Alternative Investment Fund Managers Regulations consultation (Deadline: Monday, 9 June)

Office for Equality and Opportunity, the Race Equality Unit and the Disability Unit – Equality (Race and Disability) Bill: mandatory ethnicity and disability pay gap reporting (Deadline: Tuesday, 10 June)

Department for Work and Pensions – Pathways to Work: Reforming Benefits and Support to Get Britain Working Green Paper (Deadline: Monday, 30 June)

HM Revenue and Customs – Modernisation of the Stamp Taxes on Shares Framework – 1.5% charge (Deadline: Monday, 21 July)

Minutes from the AGM for APPG for Entrepreneurship 2024

Date: 15th May 2024

Present: Seema Malhotra MP, Jo Gideon MP, Lord Leigh, Virendra Sharma MP, Bill Esterson MP, Gareth Thomas MP, Flick Drummond MP, Yvonne Forvague MP, Gill Furniss MP, Paul Scully MP, Philip Salter (The Entrepreneurs Network), Katrina Sale (APPG for Entrepreneurship).

Elections:

Seema Malhotra MP was re-elected as Chair and Registered Contact for the APPG.

Lord Bilimoria was re-elected as Vice-Chair.

Lord Leigh of Hurley was re-elected as Vice-Chair.

Jo Gideon MP was re-elected as an Vice-Chair.

The following Parliamentarians kindly support the APPG as Members:

Ian Liddell-Grainger MP

Catherine West MP

Bob Blackman MP

Fiona Bruce MP

James Daly MP

Katherine Fletcher MP

Nick Fletcher MP

Dr Rupa Huq MP

Dean Russell MP

Craig Williams MP

Baroness Donaghy

Baroness Kingsmill

Baroness Wolf

The Earl of Erroll

Lord Luce

Lord Aberdare

Lord Lucas

Bim Afolami MP

Saqib Bhatti MP

Selaine Saxby MP

Bill Esterson MP

Gagan Mohindra MP

Baroness Kramer

Baroness Neville-Jones

Anna Firth MP

Ruth Cadbury MP

Ben Bradley MP

Virendra Sharma MP

Brendan Clarke-Smith MP

Paul Howell MP

Paul Scully MP

The Lord Bishop of Southwell and Nottingham

The Secretariat produced an Income and Expenditure statement for 2023 - 2024.

APPG for Entrepreneurship Digest: May 2024

May began with local elections taking place across England and Wales. The futures of a few thousand councillors, 37 police and crime commissioners, 25 London Assembly Members and ten directly-elected mayors hinged on where voters were putting their little crosses. In this month’s digest, I want to focus on that last group of politicians – mayors – and their importance to economic growth and the country’s entrepreneurs. 

Before beginning, a quick primer. England now has eleven metro mayors, plus the Mayor of London – which for boring legal reasons is not technically a metro mayor, but in practice basically is. Different mayoralties have different powers, but all have responsibility for at least some aspects of transport policy and adult education; most take a role in housing and planning; and some have varying degrees of fiscal powers such as business rates retention.   

As well as serving around half the population of England, they also represent half the number of jobs in the economy, and even more than half (54%) of the country’s entire economic output. While it’d be wrong to ascribe all of that value creation to the individual mayors in question, it’s clear that the decisions they take will have profound consequences for how easy – or difficult – it is for businesses to thrive in their localities.  

We can see this most tangibly in areas like transport and planning policy. On issues like these, mayors have the means to make a noticeable impact – whether it’s franchising buses or extending tram networks, or reviewing local plans to enable the development of more new homes. As was noted in The Entrepreneurs Network’s latest report Building Blocks, Britain’s cities tend to punch below their weight compared to their European neighbours, and weak agglomerative forces caused by inadequate transport infrastructure and lack of housing supply doubtlessly explain much of this. By placing more responsibility for these policy areas in the hands of those closer to the reality of them, it stands to reason that better outcomes will ensue – or so a devolutionist would argue. (Certainly, it’s what our APPG chair Seema Malhotra thinks, as she told a recent interview with FE Week.)

As well as being able to pull on policy levers, perhaps one of the most important aspects of a metro mayor’s job is acting as a cheerleader for their region – both nationally and internationally. Since being elected, Sadiq Khan has repeated the phrase ‘London is open’ almost ad nauseum, in a bid to catalyse investment and attract tourists through uncertain times; during the Covid-19 pandemic, Andy Burnham was nicknamed ‘King of the North’ for campaigning for Greater Manchester to receive more support and attention from Whitehall; and while he was Mayor for the West Midlands, Andy Street was a vocal proponent for HS2, even as others in his party called for it to be scrapped. 

Given the near infinite number of variables and possible counterfactuals to consider, it’s nigh on impossible to calculate the economic impact of metro mayors. But there are strong grounds to believe it’s positive – research from the OECD suggests that cities with fragmented governance structures have productivity levels that are up to 6% lower than those that do not, while polling data from the think tank Centre for Cities shows that people living under a metro mayor support further powers being devolved down from central government (surely an indication that they think the arrangement is working well). 

Looking ahead, what might be the next step for metro mayors? An obvious place to start would be to level up the range of powers that each authority is currently afforded. As noted earlier, some mayors have responsibilities for some policy areas, while others do not. The Institute for Government recently said that: “The powers devolved are in many cases inadequate. The funding system is fragmented and short-termist. Insufficient attention has been paid to the capacity and structure of combined authorities. And the constitutional status of English devolution is uncertain.” Granting each mayoralty equal standing would be a quick and easy way to distribute more powers away from Whitehall.

Beyond that, further thought could be given to expanding what powers are available to even the most devolved mayors. Taxing and spending stands out as particularly good examples. The UK is an outlier when it comes to fiscal centralisation – with only 5% of taxes in the UK being collected by local government, well below the OECD average of 11% for non-federal countries. Tying the economic fortunes of businesses closer to mayors would, in theory, give the latter more of a stake in their success, and an incentive therefore to give them what they need. NIMBYist tendencies could be quelled if local politicians can capture more of the upside of pro-business development, rather than just the downsides as the case is currently. 

Of course, political devolution is not universally liked. And just as mayors are capable of making good decisions, so too are they capable of making bad ones. As Will Brett-Harding of the What Works Centre points out: “increased discretion over spending for local government raises questions about who will evaluate policy, and how.” Mechanisms are built into devolution deals to ensure mayors can be effectively scrutinised, but consideration of how to further boost transparency and accountability can hardly be a bad thing. 

As for now, however, the evidence suggests that metro mayors are a broadly popular turn in British politics. With a little fine tuning, there’s every reason to think that they can deliver even more for entrepreneurs up and down our country.

Adviser Update

Our Secretariat, The Entrepreneurs Network is hosting a meetup with Growth Hub Global and LSE IDEAS on 21 May. This event will focus specifically on international policy issues with an informal gathering over drinks – including non-alcoholic options – and nibbles. Learn more by clicking here.

On 22 May they are also hosting an event in Parliament with MDRx, discussing how a Labour government would build trust in AI through regulation without curbing innovation, and how this novel technology can be used to enhance public services. Learn more by clicking here.

And finally, they are convening two dinners with Britain Remade, aimed at learning more from entrepreneurs who have faced challenges to do with the planning system. One will take place on 30 May, and the other on 19 June.

Enterprise Nation is partnering with Google to convene a series of digital skills events. Their Digital Garage workshops are designed to help you grow your business online and find new customers. Learn more by clicking here.

On 19 June the Enterprise Research Centre (ERC) will be at the Shard in London to host their 9th annual Small Business Britain conference. The day will include a mix of insights from ERC research as well as discussion with a range of academic, business and policy speakers and examples of good practice in business support. Learn more by clicking here.

In Parliament

Business and Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch gave a statement to the House on the UK’s latest trade statistics. She declared: “The value of UK exports was £862 billion in the 12 months to February 2024. That builds on progress we have made in growing our exports outside the confines of the EU. Exports are now 2% above 2018 when adjusted for inflation. Services exports are at an all-time high.” Replying was Shadow Minister for International Trade Gareth Thomas, who said: “British exports in the past decade have grown slower than those of any other member of the G7 besides Japan. According to the Office for Budget Responsibility, since the Secretary of State was appointed, British exports have dropped and are expected to decline again this year, with at best anaemic growth in each of the next three years. Ministers have cut funding to help small businesses get to the international trade shows that they need to attend in order to find new export markets, and have cut funding to allow business groups to lead their own trade missions to win vital new orders for British business.”

Sammy Wilson asked the Chancellor whether he realises: “that the tax burden he is imposing on small and medium-sized businesses is crushing this economy?” In response, Jeremy Hunt said: “We are doing everything we can to support small businesses. Businesses like the one that the right hon. Gentleman mentions have received, for two years in a row, a 75% discount on their business rates. That is a massive leg up for businesses recovering from the pandemic. We have also made sure that any increases in corporation tax apply only to larger businesses.”

Pauline Latham questioned what the Government is doing “to help businesses in [her] constituency that have difficulties because [they] do not have the skills to increase the business.” Small Business Minister Kevin Hollinrake responded, saying: “We are putting £3.8 billion into skills training for people who work for businesses, which is important. We are also improving skills for entrepreneurs and business owners through our help to grow management programme – it can be found on the help to grow webpage – a 12-week mini-MBA, which is 90% funded by the Government. We also have “Help to Grow: Management Essentials”, which offers two hours of totally free online training for aspirant new business owners.”

Also on the topic of skills, Lisa Cameron told the House that: “The UK already has a strong track record as a leader, and we want to maintain that leadership and be at the helm of this transformation. We want to be seen as a destination for innovation and businesses that want to start up and scale up across the United Kingdom. We also have to level up. I hear a lot in my role about businesses starting up in London, and that is absolutely fantastic, but that has to be levelled up to give people opportunities right across the UK. The UK boasts some of the most respected universities, and the largest financial services sector and tech ecosystem in Europe. In 2023, the UK tech sector reached a combined market valuation of more than £1 trillion. Focusing on education and boosting digital skills will therefore be central to the success of the Government’s vision and will ensure that people have the skills they need to pursue careers in digital economy transformation. To turn that vision into reality and make the UK a digital and technology superpower, we must not only attract the right talent but build the talent base here through teaching and training in every sector and maximising our talent pipelines.”

Chair of the Treasury Select Committee Harriett Baldwin announced the publication of their latest inquiry, on SME finance. She said: “As every Member will know, small and medium-sized enterprises form the backbone of the UK economy. All of us in our constituencies will be aware of amazing small and medium-sized businesses. In fact, 99% of the businesses in this country are small and medium-sized, which gives us an idea of how important they are. Well over half of our constituents who are employed work for SMEs. Access to finance for small and medium-sized businesses, which the Committee has been looking at, is therefore a really important issue. I want to highlight some of the points raised in our report.”

Over in the House of Lords, meanwhile, Lord Birt told colleagues that: “The economy is highly dynamic, constantly reinventing itself and demanding new skills and abilities. Society too is dynamic, constantly evolving, and embracing social and cultural shifts. It is not clear, however, that our education, skills, health and welfare systems are acting in step and that they are sufficiently dynamic and innovative to keep abreast of and respond to these ever-changing needs of both individuals and the economy. These issues are deep, stubborn and challenging and, as a nation, we need to step back and consider in the round how best to address them.”

In a debate on startups and tax incentives, the Earl of Effingham said: “one of the main sources of capital for [startups] in the past – the UK’s Small Cap stock index – is shrinking as firms list overseas or go with private equity. So I ask my noble friend the Minister: what are the Government doing to reinvigorate the Small Cap index, help our start-ups and keep them here?” In response, Baroness Vere said: “London remains one of the leading financial centres in the world. The Government are incredibly focused on our domestic equity markets to ensure that they meet our ambitions of ensuring we have capital available to small companies. My noble friend will know that the noble Lord, Lord Hill, did a review into UK listings and we are taking forward his recommendations. My noble friend will also know that the Government are proceeding through looking at all our regulation to ensure that it is fit for purpose for the UK and UK listings under the smarter regulatory framework. He will also have seen the reforms announced by the Chancellor in Edinburgh and at Mansion House. We are seized of the opportunity we have with domestic equity markets, whether they be for large cap or small cap companies. However, we recognise that there are things we can do to make them better.”

APPG for Entrepreneurship Digest: April 2024

Most entrepreneurs intuitively appreciate the importance of branding. Being able to establish a strong sense of what their business or product ‘means’ can be crucial for standing out from the competition, and enabling them to attract and retain customers. By investing in an identity, what businesses are effectively doing is creating mental shortcuts for people to take so they feel more confident to part with their money – there’s a reason why financial institutions typically opt for sober fonts and colours, while fast food chains tend to go for an altogether more fun approach. 

If we accept that branding matters for businesses, should we then also necessarily accept that the same applies for entire countries? The fact that over recent years numerous different nations have undertaken campaigns to promote themselves as good locations in which to do business is perhaps one piece of evidence that we should. Anyone who’s ever landed at a British airport will surely have seen posters for the GREAT Britain and Northern Ireland campaign adorning the corridors, and similar strategies can be seen elsewhere too. If such initiatives didn’t do much good, it stands to reason that they’d have fallen out of favour by now. 

On the other hand, a more sceptical reader might note that even ineffectual policies can stick around long past their sell by date. Without the brutal but powerful evaluating mechanism that is profit and loss, it can be much harder to quantify the precise usefulness of government schemes. Indeed, Simon Anholt, a former advertising executive and the man credited with creating the very concept of ‘nation branding’, is less than persuaded about the efficacy of attempts to retail whole economies. In an interview with the BBC, he pulled no punches: “I have been looking for 20 years for a single properly documented case study of one single country, city or region that has demonstrably moved the needle, even by the most microscopic degree, on its global image as a result of marketing, messaging or communications. And I’m still looking.” 

Personally speaking, I broadly share Anholt’s hesitancy. Or, at least, I imagine that there are bigger forces at play. Call me dubious, but I’m not sure an ad campaign, however well crafted, is going to regularly and reliably swing decisions to strike multi-million pound deals one way or the other, or determine where a founder starts their business. 

That being said,  I don’t think this makes the idea that a nation’s ‘brand’ is totally irrelevant. Whether we like it or not, countries do have reputations, identities, vibes – whatever you want to call it. Estonia is known for its world-leading approach to digital government; Singapore for its light touch regulatory environment; the US as a place to hoover up VC cash; the UAE for its low taxes. Even if a country isn’t regarded as having an especially thriving economy, it might be known for enjoying a high quality of life, and somewhere appealing for entrepreneurs to live. (Of course, brands can also be negative – perhaps onerous compliance processes, a weak skills base, or poor infrastructure – but for the sake of politeness, I’ll not name any specific names here). 

What’s important to note though, is that those commonly held perceptions of countries are generally well-founded, and the result of deliberate policy choices. It’s then off the back of those policies, I’d wager, that you can build a genuinely effective marketing strategy, or, perhaps more powerfully, rely on word of mouth of the entrepreneur community. Give them something to talk about and the likelihood is that they will.

Markets aren’t dumb, and at the level of a national economy you can’t just hope to fake it ‘til you make it. If a country wishes to be known as a great place to start and grow a business, it helps if it’s a great place to start and grow a business. For that to be true, judicious policy making across a range of areas is prerequisite – and to that end, we’ll continue to do what we can to ensure that those policies are at the forefront of legislators’ minds. 

On 30 April, The Entrepreneurs Network, Secretariat of the APPG for Entrepreneurship, is holding a focused roundtable on how the government can do a better job of branding the UK as the best place in the world to scale a business. If you’ve got expertise to share, get in touch by clicking here.

Adviser Update

The Entrepreneurs Network and Enterprise Nation are holding a joint dinner in Parliament with the Minister for Exports Lord Offord on how to help SMEs sell abroad. Learn more by clicking here.

On 15-16 April, Innovate Finance hold their Global Summit at the Guildhall in the City of London. Learn more by clicking here. 

Between 23-25 April, it’s UK Tech Week – a new initiative that aims to showcase the tech innovation, expertise, and talent that exists across the nation and to champion the vibrant technological ecosystem that spans the UK. Learn more by clicking here.

On 20 May, the Enterprise Research Centre is holding a free event at the Shard in partnership with Propel Hub on the theme of workplace mental health, wellbeing and productivity. It will bring together researchers, people managers and business, policy and healthcare stakeholders to share cutting-edge evidence on. Learn more by clicking here.

The EISA Awards – which celebrate the outstanding achievements of participants in the EIS and SEIS ecosystem – are open for nominations for 2024. Learn more by clicking here. 

Applications also opened for UKBAA, Type One Ventures and the UK Space Agency’s Venture into Space programme – that seeks to identify businesses developing revolutionary technologies, guiding them through carefully curated activity, providing them with industry expertise, mentorship and connections in order to strengthen their propositions and ultimately enabling them to raise capital. Learn more by clicking here.

In Parliament

Business Minister Kevin Hollinrake MP gave a Written Statement on Simpler Corporate Reporting. In it, he notes that legislation will be laid: “to lift the monetary thresholds that determine company size by 50%, in order to take account of inflation and to reduce burdens on smaller businesses,” and that “the effect of these changes is that 5,000 large companies would be reclassified as medium-sized and access more proportionate reporting; 13,000 medium-sized companies would be reclassified as small companies, enabling them to benefit from exemptions to statutory audit requirements as well as the ability to file simpler accounts; and 113,000 small companies would be reclassified as micro-sized companies, which will allow them to file simpler accounts—a benefit for more than one in every four businesses that are currently classified as small.”

While discussing the topic of business investment, Andrew Gwynne MP declared: “the actual record of this Government over the past 14 years is abysmal. It is a fact that business investment has been consistently among the lowest in both the OECD and the G7,” before asking why “the Office for Budget Responsibility is forecasting a further 5% fall this year.” In response, the Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury, Gareth Davies MP said: “Announcements in each of our last three fiscal events have enhanced our business investment environment for international investors: we have the second highest foreign direct investment stock in the world; we have some of the best universities in the world, which are attracting businesses; we have announced full expensing, which is a £10 billion-a-year tax cut; we have the lowest corporation tax in the G7; and we are reforming our energy grid, bringing investment into our net zero ambitions. We are reforming our systems, reducing our taxes, and encouraging investment.”

In a debate on the Artificial Intelligence (Regulation) Bill in the House of Lords, Baroness Stowell said: “On its own, a concentration on [AI] safety will not deliver the broader capabilities and commercial heft that the UK needs to shape international norms. However, we cannot keep up with international competitors without more focus on supporting commercial opportunities and academic excellence. A rebalance in government strategy and a more positive vision is therefore needed. The Government should improve access to computing power, increase support for digital, and do more to help start-ups grow out of university research.”

A Lords debate on last month’s Spring Budget saw Baroness Bowles make the case for improving procurement processes: “It is far easier for a department to procure a large consultant than it is to procure a young technology business. Barriers include fear or lack of willingness to trial a new technology, concern about becoming stuck with the new technology provider, and fear that the technology not working will be seen as a failure. The fact that departments already end up stuck with the usual suspects, plus failures, via the usual consultants, seems not to feature.

APPG for Entrepreneurship Digest: March 2024

A week has elapsed since the Chancellor stood up to give the Spring Budget, and the dust has, just about, settled. In this month’s newsletter, we’ll delve into some of the key announcements it made for Britain’s founders, and consider how they’ve gone down in the wider entrepreneurial community. 

Looking at the Budget in the round, one thing that many seem to agree on is that it was a somewhat sedate affair. But as The Entrepreneurs Network (usual disclosure: the APPG’s Secretariat, and the think tank I work for) said in its reaction: “We can’t have it both ways. We’ve all complained about governments too readily chopping and changing policies, and then a rather boring Budget comes along and suddenly we’re all asking: is that it?” 

And indeed, last Wednesday still gave plenty for us to sink our teeth into. One of the easier, and more well-briefed, announcements that the Chancellor made was with respect to the definition of High-Net-Worth Individuals. After hiking the qualifying income threshold from £100,000 to £170,000 at the end of January, a backlash ensued from entrepreneurs and investors alike – not least those from underrepresented groups. Jeremy Hunt confirmed that legislation would be brought forward to reinstate the previous eligibility criteria, and declared that “further work to review the scope of the exemptions” would be carried out. 

Talking of thresholds, another which was subject to change was the VAT Registration threshold. This had previously been set at £85,000, and the Spring Budget saw it increase to £90,000. On the face of things, this was a good piece of news for small businesses, who’ll have some extra breathing room (the FSB were certainly happy). 

But it wasn’t met with universal approval. In recent years, increasing attention has been paid to the idea that the threshold actually holds back business growth, by incentivising small firms and sole traders to limit their turnovers to ensure they remain just below the threshold. (Tax expert Dan Neidle explains the situation far better than I could ever hope to.)

Another prominent plank of the Budget – accompanied by a hefty document of its own – centred on what more can be done to deliver better bang for the taxpayer’s buck. The Chancellor said that the Government will be taking the “next steps” of its Public Sector Productivity Plan, and to that end mapped out new funding streams for tech upgrades and digitisation. As Enterprise Nation’s Emma Jones noted in her Budget response, “increasing Government spending with small businesses and procuring the goods and services of SMEs has the power to take the best of British innovation and accelerate it.”

In order to develop those innovations, we need to harness the best of the research being carried out in our universities. It would seem Hunt agrees – as he built on previous efforts to catalyse spinouts (startups which commercialise academics’ work). “The government has asked universities to report on their spin-out policies by the end of May,” the Budget notes, “and has also begun consulting on the design of the new £20 million proof-of-concept fund to support universities and future founders to de-risk technology, and on a pilot approach to supporting the establishment by universities of shared Technology Transfer Offices.”  

As well as all of the above, the Spring Budget also saw the Government announce a consultation on a UK ISA, an update on Investment Zones, the publication of the ‘Case for Cambridge’ and a ‘Vision for Leeds’, and changes to the taxation of non-doms. 

By their nature, founders clamour for change, and that includes changes in policy. And while things might not always change on the timescales they’d like, we’ll always continue to make sure their voices are heard right at the heart of Parliament.

Adviser Update

The Entrepreneurs Network published their latest research, looking at the intersection of neurodiversity and entrepreneurship. Read it in full by clicking here.

They are also celebrating their tenth anniversary next week with an afternoon tea reception in the House of Lords. Find out more by clicking here.

With the UK Day One Project, they will also be holding a policy salon on high-skilled immigration. Find out more by clicking here.

Enterprise Nation published a report on what small businesses think and feel about artificial intelligence. Read it in full by clicking here.

A final analysis of the Business Basics Programme, conducted by Nesta’s Innovation Growth Lab, was published by the Government. Read it in full by clicking here.

In Parliament

In Business Questions, the Shadow Minister for Investment and Small Business, Rushanara Ali, asked: “What specifically will the Small Business Council do, and what will Ministers do to halt the alarming trend of more businesses closing than opening?” In response, the Minister for Small Business, Kevin Hollinrake highlighted work on improving access to finance, including “£1 billion of Start Up loans having been made to 100,000 businesses.”

Noting that it is “known around the world as a start-up nation thanks to its extraordinary tech sector,” Nicola Richards asked the Business and Trade Secretary what steps she is taking to advance negotiations on a bespoke free trade agreement with Israel. In reply, Kemi Badenoch said: “My hon. Friend will be pleased to know that we held a virtual negotiating round with Israel in February, focused primarily on services. That is one of the things that we are doing to move the FTA forward, and we will update Parliament shortly in the usual way via a written ministerial statement.”

Barry Shearman asked the Science, Innovation and Technology Secretary: “Whether she has had discussions with Cabinet colleagues on encouraging co-operation between universities and businesses to promote innovation.” In response, Michelle Donelan said: “Of course, I speak to colleagues on this important topic all the time. Our science and technology framework is designed to ensure that we do not just challenge university rankings, but translate them into material benefits for the United Kingdom. My Department has a number of programmes breaking down the barriers between universities and businesses, which have contributed to the nearly 90,000 interactions reported between universities and businesses in 2021-22. That is a 5% increase on the previous year.”

In a Written Statement, Science Minister Andrew Griffith announced the Space Industrial Plan, which he claimed: “Sends a strong demand signal to, and provides clarity for, UK space companies and investors, giving them the confidence to invest long term in the sector.” He added that: “We have heard and understood the challenges facing UK space companies, and we want the world’s space entrepreneurs and innovators to come to the UK because it offers the best possible place to make their visions happen.”

In a House of Lords debate on Higher Education, Lord Storey remarked: “The impact of research carried out in our universities is not limited to the grandest history-shaping excellences. For every history-shaping innovation, there will be millions of attempts by dedicated students and individuals contributing each day to moving the frontier of knowledge one step ahead. These are the students and people we need to support as, without them, there would be no innovation.” 

In the same debate, Lord Johnson said: “As the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs report found in its survey of employers, 44% of workers’ skills are likely to be disrupted over the course of the next five years. It is only the quality of our education system that will determine whether the UK will benefit from these innovations and whether it will be able to join the ranks of countries developing the next technologies. The most highly innovative knowledge economies around the world – look at South Korea, Israel, Japan and Canada –have boosted tertiary participation rates to well above ours, to the order of 60%, 70% or even more. Our ambition should be to join this vanguard of knowledge economies, not to give in to the dismal voices calling for student number controls that will hold back our productivity, widen inequality and throw sand into the engines of social mobility.”

APPG for Entrepreneurship Digest: February 2024

Spend almost any amount of time with a bunch of founders and it’s easy to appreciate why you often hear the phrase “entrepreneurship is contagious” being bandied around. People who create companies – on the whole – seem to be an inherently enthusiastic and encouraging breed. Even just a few conversations with one can be enough to leave you pondering whether to start a business of your own.  

What’s more, this idea is far from pure conjecture. A growing body of research suggests that exposure to founders really does increase the likelihood of someone going into entrepreneurship themselves. Just last week, The Entrepreneurs Network published their (full disclosure: my) latest report, Entrepreneurs Unwrapped, which was based on a wide-ranging survey of both founders and people who’ve never launched a business before. 

From it, we can see differences and similarities between the two groups. For instance, when asked whether they knew someone when growing up who owned a business, 71% of current entrepreneurs responded yes, while only 41% of those who haven’t started a venture yet said the same. 

Moreover, knowing a business owner seems to positively impact views of entrepreneurship. Among non-founders who reported knowing one while growing up, many more (47%) than not (10%) said that it has positively influenced their views on entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurs who reported knowing a business owner when growing up felt similarly, only to an even greater extent – with 85% saying that it positively affected their views on entrepreneurship, compared to just 3% who thought it negatively impacted them.

As I say, this is hardly the first piece of evidence that entrepreneurship is contagious. For a comprehensive rundown, readers can do no better than to read innovation expert Matt Clancy’s literature review on the subject. I’d also advise his follow up article which makes the claim that entrepreneurs “transmit to their peers the idea that “yes, even someone like you can become an entrepreneur.””

The upshot of all of this is that it should lead us to wonder about what we can do to increase exposure to entrepreneurship. The answers here will really depend on who we’re asking. For schools and universities, for instance, it might be to encourage them to invite founders in to inspire the next generation of entrepreneurs. For Members of Parliament, it might be using their unique role to convene networking sessions between existing and wannabe founders (as an aside, of all the events we put on, those in the Palace of Westminster receive the highest response rates by far).

One thing we shouldn’t overlook, however, is how spontaneous entrepreneurship can so often be. Successful startup ecosystems are precisely that not because of any great plan from on high, but because of the organic clustering of innovative, creative and ambitious minds, where ideas can cross-pollinate and collaborations can flourish. 

Doubling down on enabling agglomerative forces to run riot, therefore, might well be the best thing a government could do to increase the virality of entrepreneurship. Build good transport links, deliver livable neighbourhoods, and the serendipitous encounters between founders and non-founders alike will follow. 

Adviser Update

On Wednesday 21 February from 3.30-5pm, The Entrepreneurs Network is hosting an event at the House of Lords on what a potential Labour government would mean for Britain’s entrepreneurs. Learn more by clicking here.

The Entrepreneurs Network also published a short explainer on text-and-data mining, and how it is being regulated around the world. It can be found here.

Beauhurst published two reports recently. The first investigates new company incorporations in the UK after a record number of companies were started in 2023, and can be found here. The second explores the UK’s burgeoning engineering biology sector, and can be found here.

Tech Nation released their Global Talent Visa Report, which paints a picture of the changing face of global talent working in UK tech and outlines how the UK can continue to develop as an attractive destination for people around the world. It can be found here.

The Enterprise Research Centre published its latest State of Small Business Britain report. It draws together insights from a whole decade of ERC research, which are used to produce a manifesto for small business growth and productivity. It can be found here.

The ERC is also holding a free research showcase event on Thursday 22 February at Aston University. Delegates will hear about some of our latest work on the themes of exporting, productivity, digital adoption, rural enterprise, mental health and more. Find out more here.

In Parliament

In Business and Trade Topical Questions, Sir David Evennett asked about what steps are being taken “to help increase the number of female-led businesses.” In response, Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch replied: “Female-led businesses often face particular challenges, and in the Department for Business and Trade we work with the British Business Bank to ensure that those businesses continue to have access to finance. We have the Investing in Women code and a taskforce for women-led entrepreneurs.”

In a debate on pensions investment, Baroness Kramer asked: “is it appropriate to put pension money from small pots – people who cannot afford to lose part of that pot – into liquid, high-risk start-up investments, as the Mansion House compact seems to contemplate?” Replying was Baroness Vere, who said: “There are two things about that question. First, having a very large number of pension pots under £1,000 – I believe that there are now 4 million – is not a good way to manage pensions. We need to make sure that we can consolidate those into much larger schemes that can diversify their investments much better. However, the UK has a very poor record on pensions investing in unlisted securities, running at about 0.5% of pension pots. In Australia, the figure is 4.9% and in Canada, although it is not directly comparable, it is over 15%. Just because something is unlisted and illiquid does not mean that it cannot offer good returns over the long term.”

In a debate on the Finance Bill, Shadow Financial Secretary James Murray argued that “businesses in the UK that are keen to invest, grow, and make people across Britain better off are being held back by the lack of stability and certainty from this Government.” He went on to add: “We know that so much chopping and changing without any clear long-term plan has had a cost for our economy, by undermining prospects for investment, innovation and growth. Indeed, the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales has shared with us the view of its members that there is a lack of confidence when claiming R&D tax relief within the UK, and their belief that: “this has arisen due to the various changes made to the rules in quick succession over the past few years.””

Former Science Minister George Freeman asked in a debate: “What plans does the Department [for Business and Trade] have to make it easier for global investors to deploy money at scale in UK clusters?” Replying was the Minister of State Nusrat Ghani, who mentioned the “concierge service with the Office for Investment” and noted how: “We have also recently secured £4.5 billion through the advanced manufacturing plan. That, coupled with the research and development budget of around £39.8 billion between 2022-25, shows that we are ready to enable investment in the UK and to manufacture products in this area.”