Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Graham Stuart and Vicky Ford

Thursday 25th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)]

6. What his priorities are for the GREAT campaign in 2019-20.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Trade (Graham Stuart)]

GREAT is the Government’s most ambitious ever international marketing campaign. [Interruption.] It encourages the world to visit, study and do business in the UK. While Labour Members never lose an opportunity to talk this country down—as the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) has just done there—we use GREAT to sell Britain abroad. If the chuntering from the potential future Speaker could stop for one second, I will say that GREAT works across 144 countries, and for trade and investment in 2019-20, its priorities are the USA, Germany, China, Japan, Australia, India, Canada, France, Italy and Spain.

[Vicky Ford]

Britain’s universities are among our greatest organisations. Some are household names across the world, but some, like Anglia Ruskin University, which is based in Chelmsford as well as Cambridge, are less well known. How is the GREAT campaign supporting our education sector?

[Graham Stuart]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that question. I was at the all-party university group yesterday, meeting vice-chancellors and others, to discuss this issue. Just last month, we launched our new international education strategy. As part of that, we are encouraging bids to the GREAT challenge fund to showcase to even more countries the fantastic education offer this country has.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Graham Stuart and Vicky Ford

Thursday 11th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)]

T5. Last year, I welcomed Nesta and Sage to Parliament when they launched their report on the state of small businesses. It said that just 18% of British small and medium-sized enterprises are exporting around the world, so what more can the Department do to help our innovative small businesses, especially in providing more information on the local rules and regulations those companies face in other markets?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Trade (Graham Stuart)]

I thank my hon. Friend for that question and for all she does to champion Chelmsford exporters, building on her great expertise in the European Parliament and elsewhere.

The Department does huge amounts to support small businesses to export and, as my right hon. Friend the Minister for Trade Policy explained earlier, we are seeing significant success in that regard. Baroness Fairhead recently announced a new great export readiness tool on great.gov.uk to help SMEs better to understand how export-ready they are and what they can do to start exporting or to expand their exporting activity.