Small Businesses

HC Deb 05 December 2002 vol 395 c986W

15. Angela Watkinson

To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry how many small business start- ups there were in the last quarter of 2001. [83616]

Nigel Griffiths

Official data for the whole of the calendar year 2001 show that there were 175,455 VAT registrations in the UK. There is no comparable data on a quarterly basis. VAT start-up data are not collected by size of businesses.