Speeches by McDougall.

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Lewell. I congratulate the hon. Member for Didcot and Wantage (Olly Glover) on securing this important and passionate debate, and I thank him for his own thoughtful and passionate contribution. It was interesting to hear so many hon. Members name different local busine…”

“One of the hallmarks of our efforts through Pride in Place and other measures is recognition that there is not really a one-size-fits-all solution. In my constituency, we do not have one central high street; we probably have about a dozen separate ones, which sounds similar to the hon. Gentleman’s constituency. It is c…”

“My hon. Friend will know from talking to Alan Milburn that he is very much of the view that this is not something the Government can do alone; it will need to be done in partnership with industry and, as my hon. Friend says, with retailers in particular. Nothing in recent years has made people angrier than either exper…”

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

“They should be.”

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

“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…”

“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…”

“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 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…”

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

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

“She is a force of nature.”

“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…”

“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.”

“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…”

“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 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 …”

“Yes.”