VerbatimParliament, as it happens

Business: Women

Asked by Callum AndersonLabourDepartment for Business and TradeTabled Answered 20 July 2026UIN 18320

The question

To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, what estimate he has made of the economic contribution of female-led businesses to UK gross value added.

Answered by Blair McDougall

While the Department has not made an estimate of the economic contribution of female-led businesses to UK gross value added (GVA), independent research demonstrates the significant contribution that women-led businesses make to the UK economy.

The Alison Rose Review of Female Entrepreneurship (2019) estimated that up to £250 billion of new value could be added to the UK economy if women started and scaled businesses at the same rate as men. Frontier Economics has since estimated that achieving gender parity in entrepreneurship could increase cumulative UK GVA by €825 billion (£718 billion) by 2040.

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