APPG for Entrepreneurship Digest: May 2022

Dear Members of Parliament, Peers and Friends of the APPG for Entrepreneurship,

As Parliament opens for a new session, the APPG for Entrepreneurship welcomes two new Officers: Bill Esterson MP and Jo Gideon MP.

It is hard to think of two better additions to the APPG with both MPs bringing deep entrepreneurial expertise and experience.

As the Labour MP for Sefton Central, Bill Esterson MP has been a strong voice for enterprise and small businesses in the chamber. Between 2015 and 2020, he served as the Shadow Minister for Small Business and is currently a Shadow International Trade Minister. Like many of the Officers of the APPG for Entrepreneurship, Bill has a background in business and ran a customer service training company, Leaps and Bounds, with his wife.

Speaking of entrepreneurs-turned-politicians, our other new officer, Jo Gideon ran a handmade paper import and wholesale business for ten years before entering Parliament as the Conservative MP for Stoke-on-Trent Central. She has extensive experience working with SMEs, including for university enterprise centres, as a leadership mentor. Jo also spoke at the APPG’s roundtable on Levelling Up.

Queen's Speech
There were a range of bills in the Queen’s Speech that entrepreneurs will be interested in.

It was announced that “public sector procurement will be simplified to provide new opportunities for small businesses.” Keep your eye out for upcoming research from The Entrepreneurs Network and Enterprise Nation among others for details on what this could and should involve.

There were also measures to support new technologies such gene editing and precision agriculture, a new bill designed to improve corporate transparency, and reforms to data protection. Post-Brexit changes to financial services rules to make it easier for insurance companies to invest in SMEs were also announced.

As with all things, the devil will be in the details. But one thing is for certain, as new legislation that affects businesses goes through Parliament, we will keep you updated and make sure the views of entrepreneurs are heard.

Coming Soon
The next few months will be busy for the APPG for Entrepreneurship with briefings on Space Startups, Entrepreneurship Education, and Levelling Up all to come. And that’s just scratching the surface, keep your eyes peeled in future newsletters where we will be announcing even more events and research.

From Our Advisers
In June, the Incubator and Accelerator Network, run by the Centre for Entrepreneurs, will convene in Birmingham for its fifth annual conference, bringing together incubator managers, investors, entrepreneurs, and policymakers from across the UK. Speakers will include Roxanne Varza, Director of Station F and Andy Street, Mayor of the West Midlands. You can find out more and reserve a place here.

In Parliament
In a Commons debate on the Future of Rail, Rachael Maskell, the Labour MP for York Central, talked about the high-tech developments that she has seen, taking place in her constituency. “My recent visit to Holgate engineering works showed me how the most advanced trackside safety developments are being integrated into the fleet, with robotics, digital and high-end scanning equipment filling these yellow mechanical engines. That will give the UK the reputation for having the safest railway anywhere in the world. Again, that will be priceless when exporting our safety capability.

“York’s Rail Operating Centre—the largest in the UK—has tech that mirrors that of a spaceship. Every inch of the network is mapped live, overseen and monitored across a series of sophisticated digital tools, which enhances rail operations. It is preparing us for the future, playing a key role in plans to introduce the next generation of digital signalling on the east coast and beyond. Network Rail’s training centre for professional development is already in the city and helping to take this revolution forward, with more than 1,000 Network Rail staff already working in York.

“Every time I meet York’s engineers, excitement for the next development greets me. My thinking is transformed, my mind left marvelling. This is what we can do when we build a sustained rail cluster. When the network’s guiding mind is anchored and embedded in the midst of such developments, and the sparks of each rail entrepreneur are joined together, the future of our rail is set ablaze. That is why I am calling for investment for the rail bicentenary. The Minister will see its return.”

In a debate on B2B selling, Mark Pawsey, the Conservative MP for Rugby, talked about some of the APPG for Professional Sales’ findings on the issue. Among them was a shortage of management skills, on which he said “Covid-19 made it urgent for businesses to adjust their sales model, but many business Toggle showing location ofColumn 24WHowners were too busy and needed help developing a strategy. The majority of SME owners are yet to adopt efficiency-oriented management practices and do not use customer relationship management software. The software exists, and it needs to be used. In addition, a lack of understanding of sales often leads SME owners to make mistakes when hiring salespeople, because the business owners themselves do not understand the sales process fully.”

Lawrence Robertson, Conservative MP for Tewkesbury, asked Penny Mordaunt, the Minister for Trade Policy, what steps the government was taking to increase trade with African countries. To which Mordaunt said “Overall UK-Africa trade stood at £32 billion last year. We will increase that and achieve our investment goals. By 2030, Africa will have 1.7 billion consumers, and our post-Brexit trade policy will enable those nations to grow their economies and create opportunities for UK businesses.”

Along the same lines, Ben Everitt, Conservative MP for Milton Keynes North, asked Ranil Jayawardena, The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Trade, about what steps the government was taking to reduce barriers to trade, saying “Breaking down barriers to trade and providing businesses with the right tools and support to reach global markets is exactly what we should be doing.”

To which he replied “Bulldozing trade barriers enables countless British businesses to export goods and services around the world with greater ease and at lower cost. We resolved more than 200 barriers in the year ending April 2021—a 20% increase on the previous year. From securing British access to Japan’s poultry market, estimated by industry to be worth up to £13 million per year, and lifting the decades-long ban on British lamb exports to the US, estimated to be worth £37 million over five years, to cutting costs in services trade, an export of £304 billion in 2021, by up to 7% annually, we are getting on with the job.”

There was a debate in the Lords on the Covid-19 financial support schemes. Baroness Kramer, a Lib Dem peer asked “Can the Government now tell us what they are putting in place in preparation for the next crisis and the next need to put out emergency funding, to make sure that the systems have within them decent checks and safeguards? For example, the British Business Bank estimates that it could have saved nearly all of that fraud had it waited 24 to 48 hours before actually issuing the money, and used that time for essential checks.”

The Earl of Clancarty, a Cross-bench peer, added “My Lords, following on from the question from the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, would the Minister not agree that the Covid-related government support has been entirely necessary, and I hope very much that the Government would not be dissuaded from rolling out such schemes if required in the future, and at the pace they did, because of concerns about fraud.”

Baroness Penn, a Conservative peer replied saying “I agree with the noble Earl, and I recognise that, particularly with bounce-back loans and the CJRS, the speed at which the Government needed to act was one of the trade-offs with the checks that could be put in place. We will make sure that lessons are learned, to ensure that we got that balance correct, but one of the reasons we introduced the Bounce Back Loan Scheme and reduced the checks on it, was that original government support programmes that had greater levels of checks were not getting the money to people who needed it, and the scheme prevented the loss of businesses and livelihoods in our economy.”