Question

What steps she is taking to support female entrepreneurs.

Our Start Up Loans Company has a great track record, supporting female entrepreneurs with over 33,000 loans worth over £270.5 million since the scheme launched in 2012, to the end of April 2021. This represents 40% of the total amount lent. Over £4.5 million of these loans have been made since the start of April 2021. The scheme provides intensive support to new entrepreneurs, including low-cost government-backed loans and free mentoring.

In March, we announced an award of £50,000 each to the UK's top female innovators, as well as bespoke mentoring, to scale up and bring to market their innovations, and to help the UK recover from COVID-19 and tackle global challenges.

The Government has taken active measures, publishing the Investing in Women Code and working with industry through the actions agreed by the Rose Review. In response to the Rose Review recommendations, we set an ambition to increase the number of female entrepreneurs by half by 2030, equivalent to nearly 600,000 additional female entrepreneurs.

The government-backed British Business Bank is part of HM Treasury’s Women in Finance Charter, which asks financial services firms to commit to industry actions to prepare their female talent for leadership positions.