Small Businesses: Regulation
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, what recent discussions he has had with industry representatives on reducing regulatory burdens on small businesses.
Answered by Blair McDougall
The Department for Business and Trade engages regularly stakeholders, businesses and their representative organisations to identify regulatory burdens. Last year we launched a business questionnaire ‘Unlocking Business: reform driven by you’ which gathered feedback from businesses, including small businesses, to identify outdated, duplicative and disproportionate regulations and regulatory practices.
In November 2025, officials held 27 roundtables with businesses in all four nations of the UK to identify regulatory barriers to growth. Findings from these efforts will be used to inform our Regulation for Growth programme and we will continue our engagement programme to uncover where we can further reduce burdens.
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