Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Craig Tracey and Amanda Milling(3 years, 6 months ago)
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Craig Tracey (North Warwickshire) (Con)
The Minister without Portfolio (Amanda Milling)
Small and medium-sized businesses are the backbone of our UK economy. That is why it is vital that we are ensuring that the power of Government spending supports that vital sector, as part of both the economic recovery from covid-19 and our levelling-up agenda. We are increasing opportunities for SMEs in a variety of ways, and our measures are working. Those measures include breaking up contracts into smaller chunks, transparently publishing contract pipelines and removing complexity from the bidding process. Additionally, our new social value model explicitly allows greater weight to be given to those bids that help drive post-covid recovery.
Amanda Milling
I agree that SMEs play a vital role in our levelling-up agenda. We want to see a greater variety of companies delivering Government contracts from every corner of our country. I am sure that our new social value approach will mean more opportunities for SMEs and social enterprises to win Government contracts by demonstrating the full extent of the value that they will generate, not just economically but taking into account the additional social benefits that can be achieved from the delivery of contracts.
Craig Tracey
In its last report, the women and enterprise all-party parliamentary group found that women-owned businesses added £115 billion to the UK economy, despite securing only about 5% of Government and public sector contracts. What more can the Government do to encourage more female-owned small businesses to come forward to apply for contracts and have the confidence that they will have an equal chance in the procurement process?
Amanda Milling
I thank my hon. Friend for everything that he does as chair of the APPG on women and enterprise. I share his concern that SME owners of all backgrounds should be benefiting from the investment that Government contracts bring. We are doing more than ever to encourage all SMEs, including those owned by women, into public procurement. Government spending with SMEs continues to rise, with 26.7% of the £58 billion spent by the Government in 2019-20 going to SMEs.
International Women’s Day 2016
Debate between Craig Tracey and Amanda Milling(8 years, 8 months ago)
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Craig Tracey (North Warwickshire) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Eastleigh (Mims Davies) on securing this important debate. I am delighted to speak today as chair of the all-party group on women and enterprise. I really enjoy that role, although I have to admit that when I was first asked whether I would carry it out, I was worried that someone had misread my name and put it back to front. Thankfully, that was not the case and it is now my pleasure, through the APPG, to work with a talented group of inspiring female entrepreneurs from across a range of different backgrounds and business sectors. I want to focus on one of the key aims of our APPG, which is to encourage aspiration and entrepreneurship among women of all ages, but particularly young women.
Amanda Milling (Cannock Chase) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that Young Enterprise represents an excellent way of inspiring teenage girls to consider becoming entrepreneurs and business women in the future?
Craig Tracey
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It was good that she raised that point in Prime Minister’s Question Time last week.
There is overwhelming evidence that harnessing female entrepreneurship can only be positive for our economy. Indeed, a report that was published in 2013 calculated that boosting female entrepreneurship could deliver approximately £60 billion extra to the UK economy. We also know that women bring a diversity dividend, whereby gender-balanced boards are more successful on every measure, according to a study by McKinsey & Co.
We are making good progress, but we still lag someway behind the USA, where women are twice as likely to be entrepreneurially active as UK women, although the rates for men in both countries are the same. In 1988, the USA put in place a women’s business Act, which introduced long-term infrastructure measures, such as the women’s business centre programme, and created the National Women’s Business Council. It is no coincidence that since those initiatives went live, over 30% of US enterprises have been female-owned. I ask Ministers to look carefully at such models to determine what lessons can be learned.
Evidence suggests that one of the biggest barriers to women starting their own business is a fear of failure. Studies often say that female entrepreneurs are held back by risk aversion and low confidence. In fact, it is not necessarily a lack of self-confidence, but an informed assessment of how prepared they feel to embark on the all-important first step. That is backed up by the fact that women who have undergone some form of enterprise training are twice as likely to be engaged in entrepreneurial activity, with specific female-focused business support being vital to greatly encouraging participation.
With that in mind, it is imperative that we offer our potential female entrepreneurs the best possible chance to achieve by giving them effective information, advice and guidance in schools. Schemes such as the Careers & Enterprise Company are a welcome addition and provide an excellent opportunity to plug an all-too-evident hole in our current careers advisory process. That alone is not enough, however, so we need to encourage more female role models and entrepreneurs into our schools, colleges and universities. A big step forward in that respect would be for senior women in business and politics to engage practically with their local students—to tell them their story, which would undoubtedly not have been all plain sailing, and, in essence, to inspire and support a new generation of female entrepreneurs.
We are in an exciting place in our history. We understand more than ever what we can do to support, nurture and encourage female enterprise. With the right long-term strategy from the Government, in partnership with our current entrepreneurs, the goal of equality and parity in business is a lot closer than we might think. I look forward to playing my part, through the all-party group, to help to make that happen.