Secretary of State for Business and Trade (): The Government is today
announcing an ambitious new package to provide support for the
UK's high potential scale-ups to grow and stay in the UK.
Scale-ups contribute £2.2 trillion to the UK economy and employ
3.9 million people, despite making up just 0.8% of businesses,
yet not enough scale into global leaders.
This government has taken steps to address the scaling gap
through recent measures including the Modern Industrial Strategy,
the Plan for SMEs and the tax incentives and measures announced
in 2025's Autumn Budget.
Now we are going even further, in a sustained cross-government
effort to close the scale-up gap and make the UK the first choice
for our top scaling talent as we strive to produce the UK's first
trillion dollar firm.
For high growth, strategically important scale-ups with the
potential to be the UK's first trillion-dollar company, UK
Government will act as the strategic partner, offering a
concierge service that will act quickly and decisively to help
these companies tackle barriers to growth, whether that is
accessing talent or markets either overseas or HMG procurement or
regulatory barriers.
To strengthen the UK's pipeline of high growth firms, I have
launched an external tender for an expert third party provider to
run an 18-month pilot from Autumn 2026. As set out in the
Industrial Strategy, I want to broker new relationships with
businesses and use the expertise and experience of those
partnerships to our full advantage. This will establish tangible
and robust 12-month intensive support for scale-up founders that
are facing critical tipping points in their growth journey.
Companies will receive tailored action plans with the focus of
support on networking, markets, investment and talent.
Delivering the growth agenda in lockstep with industry is
critical, and I'm grateful for the input from my Industrial
Strategy Advisory Council and industry experts as we have
developed this offer for scale-ups. We will continue working
closely with industry to identify where the UK can go further in
boldly backing scale-ups. That is why today I have appointed
Penny Verbe who has founded and scaled global companies - as my
Scale-Up Adviser, to ensure our support reflects what businesses
need and to champion the sector.
