Asked by: Stuart Anderson (Conservative - South Shropshire)
Question to the Department for Business and Trade:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, what steps he is taking to help support hairdressing businesses.
Answered by Kate Dearden - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade)
The hair and beauty sector play an important role in supporting jobs, high streets and local economies. We’ve introduced permanently lower business rates for retail, hospitality and leisure properties and have provided £4.3bn to shield ratepayers from bill increases.
We continue to back employers who take on apprentices, by providing £1,000 to both employers and training providers when they take on apprentices aged 16-19; employers are not required to pay National Insurance Contributions for all apprentices aged up to age 25 (when the employee’s wage is below £50,270 a year). Additionally, the government pays the full training costs for young apprentices aged 16 to 21, and for apprentices aged 22 to 24 who have an Education, Health and Care (EHC) plan or have been in local authority care, when their employer has fewer than 50 employees.
I will continue to engage closely with the sector, including through the Personal Care Roundtables, to ensure the industry’s long-term growth. This includes working with hair and beauty businesses as we bring forward a new High Streets Strategy later this year.
Asked by: Stuart Anderson (Conservative - South Shropshire)
Question to the Department for Business and Trade:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, what steps he is taking to improve the sustainability of post office services in rural areas.
Answered by Blair McDougall - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade)
As announced in the Government’s recent response to the Green Paper, we are protecting the sustainability of the Post Office network by retaining the minimum 11,500 branches and keeping all geographical Access Criteria. This will ensure that communities across the UK - including rural and remote areas - continue to have local and reliable access to Post Office services.
Furthermore, the Government continues to support the rural network by providing an annual network subsidy on the basis that Post Office meets the Government-set Access Criteria. For the 2025/26 financial year, the Government has confirmed that the network subsidy will be up to £83 million.
Asked by: Stuart Anderson (Conservative - South Shropshire)
Question to the Department for Business and Trade:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, what steps he is taking to encourage people to shop locally.
Answered by Blair McDougall - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade)
We are supporting local shopping through targeted campaigns, business rates relief and programmes that help high streets adapt and thrive; and by backing initiatives that encourage people to shop locally. Initiatives such as Small Business Saturday highlight the vital role small firms play in their communities and help drive footfall to local shops.
Later this year we will bring forward a new High Streets Strategy, to reinvigorate our communities. We will work with businesses and representative bodies to pull this Strategy together. It will be a cross-government strategy, and we will be look at what more government can do to support our high streets.
Asked by: Stuart Anderson (Conservative - South Shropshire)
Question to the Department for Business and Trade:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, what assessment he has made of the adequacy of protections for a safety-critical worker where the prescribed regulator is itself a shareholder in the organisation alleged to be improperly certifying maintenance.
Answered by Kate Dearden - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade)
We understand following further detail provided that this question refers to compliance related to Monarch Airlines Engineering Ltd and the role of the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA).
As a regulator, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has oversight and audit functions in respect to the organisations that it regulates. The CAA is not a shareholder in any organisation that is regulates.
The CAA has established a range of reporting channels including mandatory and voluntary incident reporting and dedicated whistleblowing routes. These mechanisms are specifically designed to ensure that individuals are enabled to raise and report any safety related concerns appropriately.
Asked by: Stuart Anderson (Conservative - South Shropshire)
Question to the Department for Business and Trade:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, what assessment he has made of the potential implications for his policies of the prevalence of the use of non-disclosure agreements during corporate restructuring in safety-critical sectors.
Answered by Kate Dearden - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade)
The Government is unable to assess the prevalence of the use of non-disclosure agreements across the economy, including in specific sectors, as they are private contractual agreements and data on their use is not collected.
While NDAs can lawfully be used to require one or more parties to keep certain information confidential (for example, trade secrets), there are a range of legal limitations on their use. For example, NDAs cannot prevent someone from making a whistleblowing disclosure (known formally as a “protected disclosure”) or a disclosure required by law.
Asked by: Stuart Anderson (Conservative - South Shropshire)
Question to the Department for Business and Trade:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, what assessment he has made of trends in the level of the use of Non-Disclosure Agreements during corporate restructuring in safety-critical sectors in the context of the Employment Tribunal correction in Unite v MAEL.
Answered by Kate Dearden - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade)
The Government cannot comment on individual cases. In addition, the Government is unable to assess sector-based trends on the use of non-disclosure agreements as they are private contractual agreements and data on their use is not collected.
Asked by: Stuart Anderson (Conservative - South Shropshire)
Question to the Department for Business and Trade:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, what steps the Government is taking to support community pubs.
Answered by Kate Dearden - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade)
We recognise the vital role pubs play as social hubs within communities, fostering connections while driving local economies and supporting high streets. That’s why we’re investing £440,000 with Pub is The Hub to help rural pubs diversify, aiming to support rural communities, create new jobs and services.
We are planning on introducing reforms to premises licensing to simplify outdated rules, making it easier and more affordable to run hospitality venues and to allow communities to thrive. These proposals will include a National Licensing Policy Framework. A Call for Evidence closed on 6 November. We are now analysing responses at pace.
We are also creating a fairer business rates system, including permanently lower rates for retail, hospitality and leisure properties under £500,000 rateable value and through the English Devolution Bill, we have introduced a strong new ‘right to buy’ to help communities safeguard valued community assets, empowering local communities to reclaim and revitalise empty shops, pubs, and community spaces, helping to revamp our high streets and eliminate the blight of vacant premises.
We continue to work closely with the sector, including through the Hospitality Sector Council, working together to address the challenges facing all hospitality businesses.
Asked by: Stuart Anderson (Conservative - South Shropshire)
Question to the Department for Business and Trade:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, what discussions he has had with the Royal Mail on tackling postal delays in rural communities.
Answered by Blair McDougall - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade)
Ministers and officials have discussions with Royal Mail on a regular basis in its capacity as the universal service provider to ensure that service standards are upheld across all regions, including rural areas.
It is for Ofcom, as the independent regulator of postal services, to monitor Royal Mail’s service standards. The regulator sets Royal Mail enforceable targets to deliver a certain proportion of items on time each year. Ofcom takes compliance with its regulatory targets seriously and this involves conducting thorough investigations where failures have been identified.
Asked by: Stuart Anderson (Conservative - South Shropshire)
Question to the Department for Business and Trade:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, what steps his Department is taking to help support (a) high streets and (b) town centres in South Shropshire constituency.
Answered by Blair McDougall - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade)
This Department is committed to support constituencies like South Shropshire grow their high streets and town centres. Our Plan for Small Businesses sets out how government will work across departments to tackle high street decline.
This year 500 towns including Ludlow and Bridgenorth developed local plans, as part of the Safer Streets Summer, to develop bespoke local action plans with police, businesses and local councils to crackdown on crime on the high street.
SMEs on the high street will also benefit from the new tools to unlock access to finance, action to address late payments and regulatory costs, improve digital adoption and create easier pathways to business support through the Business Growth Service.
Asked by: Stuart Anderson (Conservative - South Shropshire)
Question to the Department for Business and Trade:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, what steps he is taking to increase apprenticeship opportunities within his Department.
Answered by Justin Madders
In DBT, apprenticeships remain a core element of the learning and development offer for all employees. We are taking active steps to continue to increase apprenticeship opportunities within the Department, with commitment to our recently launched DBT Apprenticeship Plan for 2025-2026. This includes offering all new Executive Officer (EO) vacancies as apprenticeships, encouraging those at the start of their careers to consider an apprenticeship route as default.
DBT are also committed to support the new ‘Civil Service Career Launch Apprenticeship’ (CLA) Programme which seeks to support individuals kickstarting their careers whilst undertaking the Level 3 Business Administration Apprenticeship, with placements launching across government and within DBT in January 2026.
DBT also supports the Government’s commitment to improving digital skills through the TechTrack scheme which is committed to supporting 2,000 digital apprenticeships by 2030.