§ Mr. Freudasked the Secretary of State for Employment if he will list programmes administered by his Department which help larger rather than small businesses and publish the thresholds of these programmes.
§ Mr. GoldingMy Department does not have any programmes designed specifically to help large rather than small businesses. However, provision has been made for small firms to be excluded from the levy imposed by industrial training boards. These firms continue to be helped by many of the services of ITBs which are available to larger firms. Temporary employment subsidy can only be given where 10 or more workers in an establishment are threatened with redundancy; in practice, the majority of users are small businesses.