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Posted: Fri 4th Sep 2026
5 min read
Britain's new small business minister, Lord Leong, has pledged to spend his first hundred days in office doing something radical: listening to businesses.
Lord Leong CBE, who became Minister for Small Business and Enterprise in July, has embarked on a nationwide tour to meet the owners of the smallest firms he will champion.
He says his mission is not to announce grand schemes but to understand what already exists and why so few entrepreneurs know about it.
In a candid meeting with Enterprise Nation at the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade, Lord Leong acknowledged a fundamental challenge facing his department: Government already runs many good schemes, and the gap is awareness. Too few owners know what is on offer.
Whitehall has spent years designing support programmes for small businesses, yet the minister himself concedes they are not reaching the people they were built to help.
Lord Leong believes that closing this information gap could make a real difference to Britain's 5.5 million small businesses without requiring new policy or fresh spending.
The minister spoke frankly about the pressure on high street firms, acknowledging the challenges they face in an economy still adjusting to higher costs and changing consumer habits.
Rather than promising immediate relief, he argued that better communication about existing schemes such as business rates relief, skills programmes and grants could provide a lifeline to struggling retailers and hospitality businesses.
But Lord Leong's ambitions extend beyond survival. He wants to plant the seeds of entrepreneurship far earlier, calling for more enterprise activity in schools so that starting a business becomes "a real option" for the next generation.
He also spoke passionately about disabled entrepreneurs, pledging that government must do more to support them.
Enterprise Nation, which represents more than 240,000 members and reaches over a million small businesses a year, laid out the scale of the challenge.
We presented findings from our Digital and AI Adoption report showing that only one in five (21%) small businesses use artificial intelligence regularly. More damaging still: 64% of firms trust their accountant for advice on technology, while just 22% turn to government schemes.
That 42-point trust gap explains why the minister's awareness problem exists. Small business owners are not ignoring help because they are lazy or uninformed. They are turning to sources they know work.
Enterprise Nation argued it could help bridge that divide and showed how Tech Hub reaches small firms as a trusted messenger, and outlined the national programme we will launch in the new year to build on it.
The meeting also covered Enterprise Nation's work to give government a consistent, real-time picture of small business health across the UK, drilled down to local authority level.
The aim is to show ministers where support is reaching firms and, critically, where it is missing them entirely.
On young people, Enterprise Nation set out how frequently its team visits schools to talk about enterprise, and proposed that Careers Hubs, which now cover 96% of secondary schools and colleges in England, could carry that work much further.
Lord Leong has set himself a tight deadline. His first hundred days will be spent listening, but the clock is already ticking.
Small business owners facing rising costs, skills shortages and economic uncertainty will expect action to follow.
Enterprise Nation has committed to working closely with the minister and his team to deliver the government's Small Business Plan.
For now, the message from the DBIST is clear: the minister wants to hear from you. The question is whether small business owners are ready to listen back.
You can see how we work with government on our policy hub.
Image credit: © House of Lords / photography by Roger Harris
