To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what support he plans to provide to businesses to help with the UK leaving the EU.

The Government provides a range of business finance measures aimed at supporting SMEs to do business in the UK. Through our industrial strategy, we are currently taking action to reduce the costs of doing business, including cutting corporation tax to 19%, linking business rate increases to the Consumer Price Index (CPI) 2 years earlier than planned, and exempting micro businesses from regulations where possible.

The British Business Bank is also currently delivering more than £5.9 billion of finance to over 82,000 smaller businesses in the UK, and since 2012, the Start-Up Loans programme has lent over £468m to nearly 61,000 entrepreneurs. At Budget 2018, the Start-up Loans programme was extended by one year to April 2021 meaning that another 10,000 loans will be made to entrepreneurs.

Further, the British Business Bank is increasing deployment of its Enterprise Finance Guarantee loan-guarantee scheme, which has headroom to double commitments from current levels (around £200-220m this year) without further funding and through existing and new delivery partners under existing approvals, subject to demand.