Oral Answers to Questions

Desmond Swayne Excerpts

Thursday 23rd March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Ms Ghani]

I will be full of meetings, but I defer to the Minister with responsibility for small businesses, who is more than happy to have that meeting. We have provided billions of pounds of support for businesses to deal with their energy costs, and we have the new supercharger in place. We lobby the Treasury long and hard, and we are more than happy to represent businesses small and large.

[Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)]

12. If she will make an estimate of the number of UK businesses that chose to list on the New York stock exchange in the last three years.

[The Minister of State, Department for Business and Trade (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

The UK is the most internationally connected financial centre in the world. We continue to attract some of the most innovative and largest companies. More than £17 billion of capital was raised for firms in the UK—a 15-year high—with over 120 deals completed. The UK is taking forward ambitious reforms to rules governing its capital markets, building on our continued success as Europe’s leading—globally, the second largest—hub for investment.

[Sir Desmond Swayne]

Is Government debt crowding out productive investment?

[Ms Ghani]

My right hon. Friend is always so succinct in his questions, and there is often a huge amount of sense behind it. I fundamentally agree that we need to collaborate with business and industry. [Interruption.] Forgive me, Mr Speaker. The response I want to give to my right hon. Friend’s very good question is that, as he will be pleased to know, there is the Lord Hill listing review and the Sir Douglas Flint review, and in particular the Edinburgh reforms, which will be considering competitiveness and will, I think, provide some sort of answer to his question. It would be remiss of me—because I know that he is particularly interested in this—not to mention that it is 50 years since women were first admitted to the floor of the New York stock exchange after 170 years of just men.