Exports

Debate between Lord Naseby and Lord Livingston of Parkhead

Wednesday 8th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Livingston of Parkhead]

The noble Lord is indeed correct that we are seeing much change in manufacturing capability. The Government are investing significantly and have ring-fenced a science budget to assist in many UK projects. We have the “eight great technologies” that we will be investing in, and we are increasing the links between companies and universities; I commend the universities on that. We are certainly supporting the advanced manufacturing capabilities as well as a number of other technologies that we believe will really help the UK to go forward, investing in the right industries that will grow in the future.

[Lord Naseby (Con)]

Is the Minister aware that the extra resources being put into exports are enormously welcome, but that the weakness is still the marketing of those resources and the facilities that they provide, particularly on export finance to the SME market in general? Secondly, the Queen’s award for exports is looking exceedingly tired and is long overdue a revamp. Finally, if we are sending and attending conferences overseas on exports, can we please appoint a Minister early in the process and not turn up at the last moment, as my poor noble friend Lord Marland had to do in Colombo? He still did a very good job, but it was late in the day.

[Lord Livingston of Parkhead]

There are a number of questions there. At this point, I am probably not looking to rebrand the Queen’s award for exports, as the Queen does seem to be the right person to award it. In terms of UK Export Finance, my noble friend does make a good point; UK Export Finance has predominately supported larger companies. We have, however, doubled the number of regional advisers for UK Export Finance, and we have launched a new product aimed at assisting smaller companies. In fact, I was at the meeting of the all-party parliamentary group on this issue, and I heard a number of small and medium-sized businesses commending the work of UK Export Finance, but there is more work to be done.