Department for Business, Innovation and Skills
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 youll 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 thats a big problem for a large number of our small businesses. So part of this is will be the mediation thats 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; were bringing in more regulators so that theyre 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 its 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 its important that we protect that term in law.
So they are the 3 biggest parts of the bill. And as I say, I hope youll read the bill, its on the website, and if youve got any comments on it, wed like to hear from you.