John Robertson – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Scotland Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by John Robertson on 2014-06-11.

To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland, what information he holds on the proportion of companies in (a) Glasgow North West, (b) Glasgow and (c) Scotland are ultimately owned by companies based in (i) Scotland, (ii) other parts of the UK, (iii) other countries in the EU and (iv) outside the EU.

David Mundell

According to Glasgow City Council figures (November 2013), there are approximately 18,000 businesses in Glasgow. The Scotland Office holds no information on the ownership nationality of companies located in neither Glasgow North West nor Glasgow.

However, across the UK as a whole, over 99% of private sector businesses will be small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) and ownership for these is therefore highly likely to be based locally.

In 2013, registered private sector enterprises with ultimate ownership outside Scotland accounted for 3.1% of firms. These are disproportionately larger firms and so account for over 35% of employment. This suggests that 96.9% of businesses in Scotland have Scottish ownership, accounting for 64.8% of employment.