Questions with the Chancellor of the Exchequer

Screen Shot 2022-09-21 at 11.18.30

The Great British Entrepreneur Awards founder Francessca James met with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak to ask him questions about entrepreneurship, from entrepreneurs in our own community. 

Emma Shipp, solicitor at Russell Cook, asks, “How will the government support small businesses and entrepreneurs, the backbone for sustainable growth for the long term. We need a medium to long-term strategy, not just reacting to events as they unfold?”

The Chancellor responded by saying, “That’s absolutely right, and it’s something I’ve been talking to businesses about when I’ve been out and about telling them about the things we’re doing to help them. It’s a program called Help to Grow and that is a program for the long term. 

“It (Help to Grow)is supporting those entrepreneurs and businesses to take their businesses to the next level. I meet so many fantastic people who have set up their business and they want support to grow it, to turbocharge it, and that’s what Help to Grow does.

There are two strands to it. So for those business leaders or people who started a company who want to go on a mini MBA, the government has created a brilliant program to do that, with a world-leading curriculum, you get a mentor, you get peer support, and we fully subsidise it or very heavily subsidise it- it’s worth thousands of pounds. 

Then the second strand is helping to grow digital, where we’re providing businesses with a £5,000 or 50% discount voucher if they want it, to get new digital software. So say the company wants to get online and start selling online or make all their accounts digital to understand what’s going on with their company, those types of things. We know those things make a difference to businesses, but sometimes the cost or not knowing quite what to do is a barrier.

So we’ve solved that with this very generous program. I’d urge anyone who’s interested in either of those programs to go look online, Help to Grow is on the gov.uk website” he said.

You can watch the full interview with the Chancellor of the Exchequer here.