Question to the Department for Business and Trade:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, what recent steps his Department has taken to consult with rural community-owned businesses in (a) Harpenden and Berkhamsted constituency and (b) Hertfordshire in the development of its planned small business strategy.

This Government is committed to embedding the voice of small business into policy. The Department for Business and Trade has engaged with hundreds of individual SMEs across all sectors and regions as part of co-designing our SME Strategy. This has included roundtables to address topics such as high streets, markets and access to finance.

Engagement with individual SMEs will continue to be a priority up to and after the launch of the SME Strategy to assess the impact of these policies on SMEs across the UK in all rural and urban areas.