UK Start-up Companies

Lord Fox Excerpts

Wednesday 28th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lloyd of Effra (Lab)]

The UK has an extremely strong track record as a vibrant ecosystem for start-ups and scale-ups, and that is something the Government are committed to building on—hence, as I mentioned, the entrepreneurship package. Specifically on regulation, we are not sitting still on that either. We have announced, as part of our regulation action plan, a commitment to reduce the administrative burden on all businesses by 25%. We have already announced several specific measures to ease the regulatory burden for smaller companies. For example, we announced in October 2025 that we would exempt tens of thousands of companies from producing strategic and directors’ reports. We are looking carefully across all departments at how we can optimise regulation. In addition, through the Regulatory Innovation Office, we are looking at how to regulate new technologies that perhaps do not fit within the existing regulatory purview, such as drones or novel foods.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, I am pleased to hear that the Government are going out and looking for evidence. I want to add another sector that has not really been mentioned here. From my meetings with businesses, there is a whole section of businesses—a large lump—with perhaps 100 employees, which are successful and are doing well, and are often family owned or privately owned, but they find it difficult to get the capital they need, not to turn themselves into unicorns but perhaps to double in size or get half the size again. Can the Minister take on board that sector? Can she discuss with colleagues how those firms can get access to the finance they need? That incremental growth would make a big difference to our economy.

[Baroness Lloyd of Effra (Lab)]

As noble Lords may know, we are supporting our public finance institutions. We are increasing the capitalisation of the British Business Bank, which can play a role in this area, complemented by the National Wealth Fund’s new mandate, which includes a focus on other sectors such as digital and technology. As the noble Lord is aware, we are also acting over the longer term, which may take a little longer, to increase the amount of capital that domestic pension funds can allocate to private assets, including through the Mansion House Accord and the Sterling 20 group, in order to continue to support businesses getting access to finance in the UK.