Anna Soubry introduces the Enterprise Bill (video)
Small Business, Industry and Enterprise Minister Anna Soubry highlights some of the measures in the Enterprise Bill, which was published on 17 September 2015.
Anna Soubry introduces the Enterprise Bill
Hello, my name is Anna Soubry, I am the Minister for Small Business, Industry and Enterprise. And I am really pleased that we are now in a position whereby we can publish the Enterprise Bill. I hope you’ll carry on on the website, read the bill and get to know and understand it.
But my task, if you like today, is to explain that there are really 3 key elements to the bill. The first is the creation of a Small Business Commissioner, and his or her role will be there to help small businesses who are having particular problems with late payments. We know that’s a big problem for a large number of our small businesses. So part of this is will be the mediation that’s available, and also, when small businesses have a complaint, they can take that complaint if the circumstances are right to the Small Business Commissioner.
Another part of the bill is to continue our work on deregulation; we’re bringing in more regulators so that they’re within the scope of our absolute determination to reduce the burden on businesses. In the last government we reduced that burden by about £10 billion, and it’s our absolute ambition to achieve the same in the next 5 years.
The third part of the bill is about apprenticeships. We know how important it is that our young people have the right skills. And under the last government we had real success with our apprenticeship scheme, and our aim is to continue that scheme and expand it – create 3 million more apprentices.
One of the things we are going to do is enshrine effectively in law to protect the term ‘apprentice’, because we know it means a lot, it has high value, and it’s important that we protect that term in law.
So they are the 3 biggest parts of the bill. And as I say, I hope you’ll read the bill, it’s on the website, and if you’ve got any comments on it, we’d like to hear from you.