Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Ben Everitt and Paul Scully(2 years, 5 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Paul Scully)
Later this year, the hon. Gentleman will see an effective code that will penalise the most egregious cases of fire and rehire and hit those companies in the pocket. That is an effective way of banning those egregious situations without disallowing the flexibility that some employers need in times of trouble.
Ben Everitt (Milton Keynes North) (Con)
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Ben Everitt and Paul Scully(4 years ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Paul Scully)
That is exactly why we appointed Sir Wyn Williams, a former judge, to lead the inquiry. I really hope that representatives of the sub-postmasters will take time to meet him, in order to become familiar with his approach. He has outlined his engagement strategy and we really want to see justice and answers as soon as possible.
Ben Everitt (Milton Keynes North) (Con)
In August, I was lucky enough to meet Dynamic Imaging Analytics in Milton Keynes—a fantastic local company that is doing some really cool stuff with space technology, including working with our local university, the Open University, to mine for water on the moon. Perhaps the Minister will join me in congratulating the Open University on its recent successes on that.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Ben Everitt and Paul Scully(4 years, 8 months ago)
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Paul Scully
This is about working with Members such as my hon. Friend and coming up with imaginative ways of opening up post offices, including Martin and Deanne’s in their hardware store. It is also important that we take the Post Office’s relationship with postmasters seriously and closely monitor the situation during the legal proceedings that many people are going through and have been through recently. The Post Office, under its new chief executive officer, has since accepted that it got things wrong. He has apologised and said that it aims to re-establish a positive relationship with postmasters. The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy is working actively with the Post Office on this matter and will hold it to account on its progress. We are also looking into what more needs to be done.[Official Report, 13 March 2020, Vol. 673, c. 4MC.]
Ben Everitt
In Milton Keynes, we can get our groceries delivered by robot, and I was fortunate last week to meet some of the humans from Starship Technologies who wrangle these robots. What support is my hon. Friend giving to small businesses and start-ups such as Starship Technologies, which are at the forefront of innovative new technology?
Paul Scully
Fortunately, questions are not answered by robot yet, so I am still here. [Interruption.] Well, there is a bit of character and it is less robotic. I believe that 50,000 deliveries have been done by Starship Technologies in Milton Keynes, so that is an excellent example. We need to make sure that small businesses can innovate, scale and grow, and we are supporting them to do so through such schemes as Innovate UK smart grants, tax credits and the annual investment allowances, and through programmes supported by the British Business Bank. Research and development tax credits are the single biggest Government support for business investment in R&D. So far, just over £4.3 billion has been claimed through those tax credits in 2017-18, £2.3 billion of which was claimed through the small and medium-sized enterprise scheme.