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 mitigate the potential impact of regulatory changes on compliance costs for SMEs.

The Government is committed to reducing regulatory compliance costs for SMEs and announced in March a commitment to reduce the administrative burden of regulation for all businesses by £5.6 billion by the end of this Parliament. We have already announced a number of specific measures to ease the regulatory burden on SMEs, including our efforts to modernise corporate reporting requirements. This will include exempting tens of thousands of companies from producing Strategic and Directors' Reports, helping to deliver annual savings of around £230 million.