British Business Bank

Debate between Baroness Lloyd of Effra and Lord Mair

Monday 9th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lloyd of Effra (Lab)]

As I said, we are helping businesses navigate the way—for example, through the business growth service, which enables businesses to access all the types of finance and support that they need, including UK export finance and other facilities with the Government. For the creative industries, Creative UK has committed to taking that role to help those businesses navigate the way through. On supporting businesses and the VC ecosystem, there is a lot of activity with the new investor pathways programme to provide £400 million of cornerstone investments into VC funds.

[Lord Mair (CB)]

My Lords, to follow up on the question from the noble Lord, Lord Ranger, I have the privilege of chairing the House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology, and we published a report recently on the financing and scaling of UK science and technology companies. To achieve real economic growth, our report recommended that the British Business Bank should work much more closely with the National Wealth Fund and Innovate UK, and that it should focus on priority sectors and companies in the direction set by the Government’s industrial strategy, which has already been referred to. It is good that the Minister has confirmed that that is the direction being taken. Is the British Business Bank actively implementing this in conjunction with the National Wealth Fund? Is it prioritising science and technology companies and the identified sectors of the industrial strategy?

[Baroness Lloyd of Effra (Lab)]

The Government’s statement of strategic priorities had as its first objective to support our most promising businesses in the industrial strategy priority sectors, and the digital and technologies sector is among the industrial sectors identified. When the next annual report comes out in a year, we will be able to tell exactly how successful that has been. However, we have seen, in the light of some of the direct investments made, that the British Business Bank has taken seriously the mandate to invest directly and is pursuing that pathway.