Stephen Timms – 2022 Speech on Entrepreneurs from Ethnic Minority Backgrounds

The speech made by Sir Stephen Timms, the Labour MP for East Ham, in Westminster Hall, the House of Commons, on 20 December 2022.

I beg to move,

That this House has considered support for entrepreneurs from ethnic minority backgrounds.

I am delighted to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hosie. I am grateful to Mr Speaker for granting this debate, and I am very pleased to see the Minister in her place.

I represent in Parliament the eastern half of the London Borough of Newham, which is probably the most ethnically diverse community on the planet. Last year’s census showed that just 45% of residents were born in the UK, and that 52% identify as Asian, compared with 9% nationally, and another 14% identify as black. Some 25% identify as white, compared with 82% nationally, so ethnic minority entrepreneurship is very important for the prosperity of the community that I represent. I regret the closure of the Department for Work and Pensions support programme for self-employment, with no sign of a replacement as yet. That programme gave helpful support to a significant number of my constituents to start up in business for themselves.

Minority-led businesses have made a lot of progress. Minority Supplier Development UK, a not-for-profit membership group that champions diversity and inclusion in public and private sector supply chains, highlighted in a report last year called “Minority Businesses Matter” that of the UK’s 23 unicorns—start-ups valued at $1 billion or more—eight had ethnic minority founders, including Deliveroo. That gives a sense of the huge potential in this area, which we need to realise much more. In May, the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry published the report “Ethnic Diversity in Business”. I commend the work of Esenam Agubretu and her colleagues. That report identifies the barriers that minority-led businesses face.

In 2021, about 14% of the UK population was from an ethnic minority background, but ethnic minority-led businesses constituted just 5% of small and medium-sized enterprises in 2020, and those businesses also tend to be in lower-paying sectors. We need to be doing much better than that. The economic contribution of ethnic minority-led businesses is large, but the potential is larger still. Baroness McGregor-Smith’s 2017 review, “Race in the workplace”, concluded that

“If BME talent is fully utilised, the economy could receive a £24 billion boost.”

We need to realise that opportunity. The Social Market Foundation has found that ethnic minority-led businesses are often more innovative, with a lot to contribute to levelling up the economy, and that the economy is weaker because those businesses lack support.

I want to highlight two main points arising from the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry report: the need to address the barriers that ethnic minority businesses face in accessing finance, and the need for better data on how those businesses are getting on. The key barrier, and the focus of that report, is problems accessing finance. Black entrepreneurs in particular report bad experiences with banks, and Asian entrepreneurs struggle to access funding outside their own communities. Those who do apply for funding are far less likely to receive it. The London Chamber of Commerce and Industry quotes Ismail Oshodi describing his experience:

“we had different people dealing with us and I had to repeat myself on several occasions, even with all of that, we were unable to get the amount we needed. We weren’t given a clear reason why, we was just told we did not meet their criteria.”

The LCCI says that 44% of black African business owners and 39% of black Caribbean business owners fear prejudice from financial providers, compared with just 4% of white owners. Let us be frank: racism is part of the problem. It is not that the banks do not recognise the problem; they do, and they are trying to do something about it. UK Finance published a report in July, “Supporting Ethnic Minority Entrepreneurship in the UK”, which profiled numerous initiatives. HSBC sponsored last year’s Black Business Week and Black Business Show. Santander works with a network of women of colour in business and supports a black inclusion programme. NatWest has a racial equality taskforce and an ethnicity advisory council. Barclays has a black founders accelerator.

The initiatives that I have seen most of are those supported by Lloyds bank. It has a black business advisory committee, chaired by Claudine Reid MBE, whom I first met when I was a Minister in the Department of Trade and Industry 20 years ago. I had embarked on a tour of social enterprises and found myself at PJ’s in Croydon, set up and run by Claudine and her husband. I also know the work Lloyds does with the Black Business Network, founded and chaired by Shari Leigh, which was highlighted to me by my former constituent Shi Dolor, whom I knew when she was a teenager and whose Noir Squared branding business has worked with the network.

In September, the network published the second of three annual reports called “Black. British. In Business …and Proud!” As a Lloyds executive recognises in her foreword, it makes for “uncomfortable reading”. The report refers to a

“breakdown in trust of formal institutions”,

and reports that 67% of black business owners have been negatively discriminated against in their past entrepreneurial efforts, that 84% of business owners see racism and society’s attitude to black entrepreneurs as a barrier to their business, and that black business owners turn to their friends, black business community groups or social media groups rather than banks for advice and support.

Dr Lisa Cameron (East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow) (SNP)

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for bringing this vital debate to the House. Does he agree that where there is intersectionality between ethnic minority groups and disability or gender, the barriers faced by people can be multiplied, and that banks and the Government should also take that into account?

Sir Stephen Timms

I very much agree with the hon. Member. That point is made in the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry report, and she is right to highlight it.

Over half of black business owners say that they have seen banks taking action to deal with the problem, but only 12% think that that action taken is significant. Minority-led businesses also account for very little venture capital investment, less than 2% of which went to all-ethnic founder teams in 2019, according to the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Black African firms are four times more likely than white firms to be refused a loan, according to the British Business Bank. Mainstream services do not seem to be working for ethnic minorities. Ethnic minority groups have less wealth than their white counterparts, and there is a strong correlation between that and business success. They have fewer savings, so they are more reliant on external financial support.

Given that, it is no surprise that minority-led businesses do less well. According to London Chamber of Commerce and Industry research, 38% of Asian and other minority business owners and 28% of black business owners reported making no profit, compared with 16% of white business owners. Thirty-nine per cent. of black entrepreneurs and nearly half of Asian and other ethnic minority entrepreneurs stopped working on their business idea because of “difficulties getting finance”, compared with a much smaller proportion—just a quarter—of white entrepreneurs.

We need to be doing better than this, for the sake of not just business owners but the wider prosperity of our society. I welcome the Labour party review of start-up funding, led by Lord O’Neill, who was a Treasury Minister in the coalition Government. The review will consider how to ensure that ethnic minority entrepreneurs can access the finance, support and networks they need. Newham-based Shpresa is a community organisation supporting self-help among London’s Albanian community. It was founded and led by the remarkable Luljeta Nuzi, a social entrepreneur I first met when she came to the UK seeking asylum from Kosovo. She went on to graduate from the School for Social Entrepreneurs, and when today’s debate was announced, she drew my attention to the school’s match trading initiative, which provides enterprise grant finance, supported by Lloyds bank; the aim is that racially minoritised social enterprises should be early adopters.

When the Minister responds, can she give us the Government’s assessment of the lending practices of financial institutions to ethnic minority businesses, and say whether she sees real progress being made? It is welcome that between 2012 and 2018, over 11,000 ethnic minority entrepreneurs received Government-backed start-up loans. The additional action that is needed is largely for the financial services industry, but there is one area where Government action is particularly needed: public procurement. A big section of the report by the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry is devoted to this area, and it calls for a Government taskforce to work on increasing public procurement from ethnic minority businesses.

The LCCI wants the Government to move beyond merely “best endeavours” to introducing, for example, minimum target percentages for procurement from minority-owned businesses, in order to simplify procurement procedures and increase public purchasing from micro-businesses. It also wants tenders to be scored, in bid assessments, on supply chain diversity, and the Government to establish prestigious awards to highlight the achievements of minority-owned businesses.

In the LCCI’s report, a quote caught my eye from Demi Ariyo, founder of a funding platform:

“It became clear to me that there was a problem to be solved upon witnessing my church’s experience and hearing the first-hand experience of other minority ethnic entrepreneurs who had tried to seek funding.”

As the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on faith and society, I would like there to be greater support for entrepreneurship among people who are coming together in faith groups. Britain’s history is replete with great businesses that have their roots in religious faith. Let us have more of them, and newer ones.

My second point is about the lack of reliable data on ethnic diversity in business, which the report describes as “a recurring theme”. Here again, we need action by Government and by business. Companies House does not record the ethnicity of company directors. There is no legal requirement for businesses to publish their ethnicity pay gap, although they are rightly obliged to publish their gender pay gap. In 2017, the then Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), promised to ask large employers to publish their ethnicity pay gap data. It has not happened yet. Can the Minister tell us whether that 2017 commitment still stands, and if so, when it will be implemented?

The paucity of data means that there is a lot that we just do not know. Without detailed and reliable data on ethnic minority entrepreneurship, we cannot fully understand the barriers that exist, as we must if we are to remove them. In this recession, the gap between ethnic minorities and others in business may well get worse. We need to grip this issue now, so that trends can be monitored and support appropriately targeted. We cannot meet the needs of minority-led businesses without having adequate information about their characteristics and their performance.

In the LCCI report, Dr Tony Matharu, chair of the LCCI’s Asian Business Association, and Lord Michael Hastings, chair of its Black Business Association, call for financial institutions to collect data about their support for ethnic minority businesses, as they do for women-led businesses under the Investing in Women code.

The two issues that I have highlighted are part of a much bigger set of challenges. When the Minister responds, can she assure us that the Government recognise the need, spelled out by the LCCI, for strategic engagement between the business community, Government and ethnic minority entrepreneurs?

Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)

I support the right hon. Gentleman’s efforts on faith and society. As one of the officers of the all-party parliamentary group on black and minority ethnic business owners, I am supported by Diana Chrouch. I direct hon. Members’ attention to an article in The Sunday Times of 14 February 2021, by Oliver Shah, talking to Wol Kolade, who has the initiative 10,000 Black Interns. He talks about unkinking the pipeline of black talent. It seems to me that letting people get through and do what they are capable of is what we should be aiming for.

Sir Stephen Timms

I completely agree with the Father of the House. I had not seen that article, but it sounds to me as though it makes exactly the case that needs to be made.

I wonder whether the Minister will commit to better engagement between the groups I mentioned, in order to boost diversity in business. Bridging this large and persistent ethnic diversity gap is not straightforward. Realising the potential to which the Father of House has rightly drawn our attention is a long-term challenge. We need to be determined to end racial and ethnic inequality across UK society, including when it comes to start-up support, and to closing gaps that have persisted for far too long.

I hope that the Minister can reassure us that the Government recognise the importance of the issue, and will set out plans to make sure that we can all benefit from the skills and contributions of all those who want to set up in business but are too often excluded by unfair and unnecessary barriers.