§ Baroness Elliot of HarwoodMy Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
§ The Question was as follows:
§ To ask Her Majesty's Government how many new businesses have been established in the United Kingdom so far this year and how many have had to give up trading in 1981.
The Minister of State for Defence Procurement (Lord Trenchard)My Lords, the latest information relates to 1980 when it is estimated from VAT sources that in the United Kingdom about 120,000 businesses started to trade at a significant level, that is to say their turnover was above the VAT threshold; a similar number ceased trading, for whatever reason, including mergers, takeovers, bankruptcies and liquidations.
§ Baroness Elliot of HarwoodMy Lords, I thank the noble Viscount for that reply. However, is it not a fact that the number on the Registry of Business Names and the Register of Companies has gone up considerably this year and amounts to something like 60,000?
§ Viscount TrenchardMy Lords, according to the Register of Companies, the figure for the period January to October 1981 reached 60,794, which is an increase on the previous year. The Registry of Business Names also has some shortcomings as a measure of new businesses. Businesses trading under the name of the proprietor do not register and not all those who trade under another name register either.
§ Lord Mackie of BenshieMy Lords, is the Minister able to give us the equivalent figures for, perhaps, 1976 or the year prior to that?
§ Viscount TrenchardMy Lords, I am afraid I do not have figures going back that far. In the last two years the rise has been a relatively small percentage, but the movement is in the right direction. At the time—1980—business as a whole was in the throes of a recession.
§ Lord Orr-EwingMy Lords, is my noble friend aware that in his first Answer he said that he had derived these figures from VAT sources? Is it not true to say that small companies would, in their early years, be trading below the VAT limit and would not, therefore, seek to register for VAT purposes? Or is that a mistake?
§ Viscount TrenchardMy Lords, my noble friend is quite right. The current threshold for VAT registration 82 is £15,000 per annum turnover. So very small businesses are missed by that method of trying to answer the Question. There is no perfect way of answering the question about the number of small businesses, and to provide one would require a degree of administration from which we are trying to free small businesses.
§ Lord Cledwyn of PenrhosMy Lords, can the noble Viscount give some indication of the percentage of the new businesses which are in the engineering industry and in other productive industries which may be of use to the country in the coming years? Can he also give a spread of the industries in the country as a whole and say how many of them, for example, are in the North-East; how many are in the London area; how many are in Scotland; and how many are in Wales?
§ Viscount TrenchardMy Lords, I am afraid that I do not have that degree of detail with me. As regards the spread of the types of industries, I know that they contain an important percentage of modern industries such as, for example, electronics, but I shall write to the noble Lord in relation to further splits.
§ Lord Orr-EwingMy Lords, in view of the number of new initiatives that the Government have taken to encourage the formation and growth of small businesses and the jobs that go with them, ought there not to be some yardstick with which to measure the results achieved, so that they are rather more up-to-date than the figures that my noble friend is currently able to give for 1980?
§ Viscount TrenchardMy Lords, there has been in this particular year a slight delay as regards the readiness of the figures, but the general answer is that which I gave just now—that it is extremely hard to get an exact register of small businesses without greatly increasing administration.
§ Lord Davies of LeekMy Lords, can the noble Viscount tell the House whether there is still encouragement of development not only in industry but in agriculture? What chance, in a small way, does a youngster have in these days to develop in agriculture, a smallholding or farming, either as a beginning or as a career?
§ Viscount TrenchardMy Lords, I think the agricultural aspect is a separate Question, so perhaps the noble Lord would table it. However, the number of the Government's measures to encourage, for instance, the regrettable number of people with redundancy payments to invest in new enterprises is very considerable and I believe that it stretches into the agricultural sphere.