Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Fifty per cent. of SME 500 companies were set up during the recession. Now is the time to encourage entrepreneurs. It takes courage, grit and determination to be an entrepreneur. May I urge the Minister to do all he can to help people to set up businesses and create employment?
Absolutely. It is crucial to ensure that when we devise employment law we recognise that often those small micro-businesses cannot cope with the kind of well-intentioned red tape that often comes from Whitehall and Westminster. We need to get the balance right. Those are the people in my mind when we devise these laws.
(13 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberAlthough I am irrepressibly optimistic about future growth in Hastings, I was stunned to find last week that, on the index of multiple deprivation, we had fallen from 31 to 19. May I therefore urge the Minister to give careful consideration to stimulating areas of the south-east that have particular deprivation problems, and not to concentrate all the tools from his toolbox on the north-east region?
That is an image that I will not pursue. I am well aware that coastal towns in particular often feel that they are at the end of the economic line. I would welcome the opportunity to talk to parliamentary colleagues about that to see how we can focus in on this important issue.