Debates between Giles Watling and Andrea Leadsom during the 2017-2019 Parliament

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Giles Watling and Andrea Leadsom
Tuesday 22nd October 2019

(4 years, 6 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Giles Watling Portrait Giles Watling (Clacton) (Con)
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10. What steps she is taking to enable more women to establish businesses.

Andrea Leadsom Portrait The Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Andrea Leadsom)
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We want to make the UK the best place to work and grow a business. We have set the target of an additional 600,000 female entrepreneurs by 2030, and the British Business Bank has delivered over £198 million to women in start-up loans. With my hon. Friend the Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury, we are implementing the initiatives of Alison Rose’s review, including focusing on female entrepreneurs’ access to finance, better enterprise education and launching the investing in women code.

Giles Watling Portrait Giles Watling
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I thank my right hon. Friend for her answer. In my Clacton constituency, I am fortunate to have a group of very powerful businesswomen, with whom I had a very pleasant business lunch recently. In 2018, the BBC reported that women were half as likely to set up a business as men. I am pleased that the Government are doing all that my right hon. Friend said, but that must be in part due to a bias in education, so what more can be done to address this great loss of potential?

Andrea Leadsom Portrait Andrea Leadsom
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My hon. Friend is quite right. We need to go further in addressing education, and that is why one initiative in the Rose review specifically addressed the roll-out of enterprise education in schools and colleges to help in particular with the skills women need for business success at an earlier age. BEIS has also launched the Longitude Explorer prize, which is aimed specifically at 11 to 16-year-olds, to encourage innovative problem solving in our young entrepreneurs.