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Businesses: Regulation

Asked by Callum AndersonLabourDepartment for Business and TradeTabled Answered 26 January 2026UIN 107264

The question

To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, what criteria his Department is using to identify regulatory barriers affecting high-growth firms.

Answered by Blair McDougall

The Department for Business and Trade engages regularly with stakeholders, businesses and their representative organisations to identify regulatory barriers affecting businesses, including high-growth firms. Last year we launched a business questionnaire ‘Unlocking Business: reform driven by you’ which gathered feedback from businesses to identify outdated, duplicative and disproportionate regulations and regulatory practices that hinder growth and innovation.

In addition to this, officials also held discussions with businesses in all four nations of the UK across key, growth-driving sectors, to identify other regulatory barriers to growth. Going forward, findings from these will be used to inform our Regulation for Growth programme.

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