I am sorry that I cannot emulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Great Yarmouth (Brandon Lewis) by speaking without notes, but I will do my best to ad lib a little. I thank him for securing this important debate. I love his words that SMEs drive the whole economy. It brought back the words of Winston Churchill about the private sector; he said that some people see private enterprise as a predatory tiger that needs to be shot. Some people see it as a cow that needs to be milked. Few people see it for what it really is: the strong horse that pulls the whole cart. That is exactly right. Everything we see in the public sector and in this House is paid for by the private sector, the taxes it raises and the jobs it creates.
I totally agree with my right hon. Friend on the title and the primary content of this debate—SMEs are the most important part of the sector. As he said, I started a very small business and grew it over time, but the pressure we were always under as our business grew was from smaller businesses starting up and putting pressure on our market share. I listened carefully to his points about his father’s business and the legacy effect it has had on Great Yarmouth. That is my experience. Many people go into business for the potential financial reward, but also for the legacy: the jobs they can create and the business that they leave behind. That has a long-lasting effect on towns such as Great Yarmouth.
The Department for Business and Trade is seeking to make the UK the best place to do business in the world. We want to make it easier to do business every single day. My ministerial colleagues and I, as well as many others including my right hon. Friend, the Chancellor and the Prime Minister, are for business because we are from business. We understand how this works.
My right hon. Friend made the point about smaller businesses that start up and grow to become larger businesses. That is the fundamental basis of our strategy to scale up Britain. We want the start-ups to become scale-ups. That is one of our areas for development. We are No. 1 in the OECD for start-ups per capita, but in a survey of 14 OECD nations, we were 13th for scale-ups—businesses that have 10 employees or more after three years. That is our focus, and there are three key focus areas underneath that: access to finance, support and advice, and removing barriers and red tape. Those are critical issues for the SMEs I speak to.
When we speak about business, it is important to speak about the entire world of businesses in all sectors. Hospitality is very important in Great Yarmouth, where 23% of all jobs are in the tourism industry. In his intervention, my hon. Friend the Member for Aberconwy (Robin Millar) rightly said that the hospitality business feels that cold wind first, but also sees the benefit of the improvement in the economy first, too. It is truly the canary in the coalmine, as he put it.
In Great Yarmouth there are some fantastic opportunities for the future, not least in green energy. My right hon. Friend pointed out the businesses that are benefiting from that. I am aware of ASCO, which employs more than 100 people, providing services to the North sea opportunity that is green energy—30 wind turbines on the Scroby sandbank. There are many more opportunities in that sector.
In the Lowestoft and Great Yarmouth enterprise zone in his constituency, South Denes energy park and Beacon Park are boosting innovation and growth in the region. More recently, investment through the Great Yarmouth town deal and the future high street funds, building on previous support from the local growth fund, is helping the local area by supporting jobs and growth in that region.
I will go into some specifics about the three areas of focus I referred to earlier. First, access to finance is one of the primary concerns for small businesses as they open their doors and grow. We work closely with the British Business Bank to improve access to finance. I am pleased that as of March 2022, the British Business Bank programme has supported over 96,000 small and medium-sized businesses nationally with over £12.2 billion of finance. The programme is designed to bring benefits to start-up businesses, businesses with high-growth potential looking to scale up and businesses looking to stay ahead in the market.
I know my right hon. Friend the Member for Great Yarmouth has supported many initiatives in his time in this place, such as the important start-up loan scheme, which has delivered around £1 billion of finance to 100,000 companies. Those unsecured loans are vital to many people who cannot access finance to start a business. In his constituency, 95 loans have been provided, to a value of almost £800,000.
Inclusion is a priority of this Government, so I am pleased that in terms of all the start-up loans issued up until April 2023, 40% went to women, 20% went to people from a black, Asian or minority background and 32% went to people who were previously unemployed. Those are all disproportionately high numbers, which we should welcome.
Within the space of access to finance, we are also undertaking the payment and cash flow review. We know that is an issue for SMEs and we want to make it easier for them to be paid, as that is another source of finance. We have improved our equity finance offering through schemes such as the regional angels programme, supported by the British Business Bank, and the enterprise investment scheme, the remit of which has been extended.
We are looking at potential new opportunities on the back of open banking. Open banking was a huge success in this country and has been emulated around the world. There are now 7 billion API calls every month for open banking, connecting one banking app with another, and there are other fintech solutions. Open finance provides the opportunity to completely liberate opportunities for SMEs to access finance. Rather than going to their own bank and asking for a loan, they can ask many different providers for that finance, which will increase choice and opportunity.