§ Mr. David Shawasked the Secretary of State for Energy if he will make a statement on the achievements of his Department in helping small businesses over the last three years; and if he will publish the performance indicators by which his Department monitors those achievements and the statistical results of such monitoring.
§ Mr. ParkinsonMy Department takes full account of the needs of small businesses in considering the adoption or revision of measures for which it is responsible.
Small businesses, like larger ones, will have benefited from measures to encourage competition and stimulate efficiency in energy supply and use. They will also have shared in the benefits from a range of measures, including:
- —information and advice schemes to help firms use energy more efficiently;
- —support for research and development in new energy technologies; and
- —promotion of the offshore supplies industry.
Because the span of these activities is so wide, it is not possible to single out their impact on different sizes of company: some individual measures have, however, been of particular benefit to small business. An example of this is the Energy Efficiency Office's support of projects to draughtproof the homes of low-income groups. Much of the new and expanding market for the materials concerned, worth perhaps £10 million in the current financial year, will be supplied by small companies.
In addition, £40 million has been made available to British Coal Enterprise to help create jobs in coalfield 413W areas. This has contributed directly to the creation of 18,506 new job opportunities in 1,399 individual projects, many in new, often small, businesses. The company's investment of £31.5 million so far has attracted additional finance from other sources of almost £200 million.