Speeches by McDougall.

“No, we all have to be not just allies but active allies.”

“We are committed to the taskforce in a long-term way, and you can see that in the way the workstreams have been ordered. Jason would oversee the two bits of work on behalf of the Government representation, which are about raising and deploying money. My part of the picture is about the wider ecosystem and dealing with …”

“They should be.”

“The wording could have been better. I suspect the emphasis was on highlighting people who are particularly—”

“Yes.”

“Can I just add to that? We have slightly discussed the tension between doing things that are structural and things that are bespoke and tailored to women entrepreneurs in particular. The way to get more investors in is by proving it through this. We know there is evidence that women entrepreneurs provide better returns…”

“I would just challenge that slightly; the most important interventions that we are talking about run throughout the industrial strategy. I accept that if you press Ctrl and select all and search for the word “women”, it may not come up, but we have sections on improving the diversity of the workforce; we have reference…”

“I have a couple of things on that. The first thing to note is obviously that many of the interventions and programmes that we are talking about are ones the Chancellor is deeply engaged in. For example, the Invest in Women Taskforce, where Jason and I—and we can slightly apologise for being men—are surrounded by extrao…”

“The first thing to acknowledge is that it is a very long-standing societal problem that we are running at here. However, first, we are running at it, and I am sure we will talk today about all the interventions and programmes that we are deploying in support of trying to remedy the problem. Secondly, there is something…”

“She is a force of nature.”

“It is extraordinary. Obviously the regulation of the platforms, social media and the places where some of this is happening is for DSIT. I know it is aware of it and is looking at it. This is a reminder of the importance of having women throughout the funding ecosystem because it not only results in women entrepreneurs…”

“We are working very hard on improving our scale-up offer more generally because lots of our business support is not particularly focused on that journey. We will try to make sure that some of the treatment that people get through the Office for Investment is the sort of journey that our domestic businesses would experi…”

“It is a completely fair challenge. Can I address your first point before we talk about that? This is something we have not spoken as much about: the importance of visibility with all this, not just so that you—the people holding us to account—have a sense of what is happening and the progress that is being made but it …”

“I confess that it was this Committee that brought shadow banning to my attention and I was slightly astonished to learn about it.”

“Jason is the Treasury Minister here so I know not to overstep the mark, but I will add that there has been a call for evidence on how to improve entrepreneurial tax incentives, which recently closed, so there is a whole basket of suggestions being mulled over.”

“I oversee the industrial strategy and the SME strategy and throughout both strategies you see a recognition that there needs to be specific interventions because there are market failures that are wrong for people who believe in equality and equal opportunity but also economic waste. It is there and it runs through thi…”

“As Kristen said, these are not issues we are ruling out if we feel we are not achieving those signatory numbers we want to see. Currently, with both the Investing Women Code and the other interventions that we are undertaking, we are making significant progress. However, I hope you are getting a collective sense of the…”

“Similar to the answers given on behalf of the British Business Bank, we are making significant progress across the market in getting people to sign up to the code. In terms of mandating, the general position of the Government is towards trying to reduce regulatory burden and cost, particularly from reporting. We now ha…”

“It is the age of the business, I think.”

“Just to also say, Chair, obviously the Women in Tech Taskforce, which was launched by the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, has a call for evidence out until I think tomorrow on how best to deal with the barriers that create the situation that you describe. That workstream is going on within Go…”