Electronic Trade Documents Act 2023

Debate between Lord McFall of Alcluith and Lord Offord of Garvel

Thursday 14th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Offord of Garvel (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness for that question. I can assure her that this is a great focus for the Department for Business and Trade. At the moment in the UK, only 10% of our SMEs are exporting. Overall, we are a great exporting nation; we have recently gone from sixth to fifth in the table, and we are second in services, so we have a strong export tradition, but we could do better among our SME community. My personal ambition is to drive that number up, and digital has a key part to play in that. There are some 280,000 SMEs exporting. We want to double that, and the digital route will be the way to do so. We have already identified 100,000 essentially new business which are born digital and born international, which will be a great boost to the SME trade. That will be a great focus for our department going forward.

[The Lord Speaker (Lord McFall of Alcluith)]

My Lords, we have a virtual contribution from the noble Baroness, Lady Harris of Richmond.