UK Exports

Baroness Mobarik Excerpts

Wednesday 8th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Mobarik (Con)]

My Lords, I begin by saying how much I have enjoyed today’s debate. The depth, breadth and scope of the speeches really reflects the wealth of experience in your Lordships’ House. This is exactly the kind of broad and creative thinking that the Government are encouraging to inform our strategy as we move forward. It is a pleasure to respond on behalf of the Government. I thank noble Lords for the valuable, valid and powerful points that they have made this evening. I especially thank the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, for posing this Question for Short Debate and for his views. It is clear that noble Lords recognise the great importance of global trade, as do Her Majesty’s Government. With this in mind, I would like to set out the Government’s strategic vision and address the points raised during this debate.

The Department for International Trade provides market access, support and advice to UK business, both in the UK and abroad. We engage with key trade partners in order to build on our trade relationships and improve the policy environment for international trade and investment. Through the GREAT Britain campaign, we build a global appetite for British goods and services and encourage more people to visit, study, invest in and do business with the UK. There are two parts to the Government’s strategy to support UK exports. The first is to increase the value of the UK’s exports. We identify the markets and sectors where intervention by government and financial support are vital in helping UK firms to supply the largest projects around the world. This ensures that government resources are concentrated on high-value areas.

The second element of our strategy is to increase the number of businesses fulfilling their exporting potential. Our suite of support for potential and existing exporters is spearheaded by our award-winning Exporting is GREAT digital platform. We also provide exporters with financial support through UK Export Finance, and work is currently under way to make UKEF services even more accessible. The noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, referred to the importance of export finance. Since 2011, UK Export Finance has provided a total of £18.8 billion of support to exporters. Measures announced in the Autumn Statement 2016 included the doubling of UKEF’s total risk appetite to £5 billion.

The noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, also asked what role the Government should be playing in promoting exports. The Department for International Trade provides support that is designed to complement rather than crowd the private sector and is targeted where government can add most value. We identify the markets and sectors that present the greatest export opportunities, which allows us to focus our efforts on a number of high-value areas, known as high-value campaigns, to achieve maximum impact and success. For example, in our Kazakhstan programme, we have facilitated 51 local partnerships and helped UK companies win contracts worth more than £6 billion since 2011-12.

Our support is tailored according to where a business is at in its exporting journey. For smaller businesses that are not yet exporting, we provide trusted country guides that help them understand the market from the get-go and ensure that they enter a market in which they have the potential to succeed. We also support trade missions that give businesses a view into a chosen market before they commit to export. We use our extensive network and comprehensive in-market presence to help open the door while leveraging our HMG brand. Finally, we use our Government-to-Government relationships to help bring down structural trade barriers such as regulation.

My noble friend Lord Patten and the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, remarked that we need to be ambitious in our targets and drive to get more businesses exporting. Our flagship digital platform—GREAT.GOV.UK—helps businesses access a range of digital tools so they can access the support that is right for them. Launched in November 2016, the website gives UK businesses access to millions of pounds-worth of potential overseas business to help them start or continue exporting. It also provides a new, searchable directory to match businesses with worldwide demand for UK goods and services. Since November, the Find a Buyer service has attracted almost 2,000 export-ready UK companies to sign up and start promoting their products to businesses across the world. Global investors can also find UK suppliers by accessing the international-facing side of GREAT.GOV.UK. The site offers practical advice to potential investors, and the pages have been translated into Chinese, German, Japanese, Spanish and Portuguese, with Arabic to launch later this month.

Finally, we have launched the selling online overseas tool, which helps match UK businesses with the right global online marketplace for their products and services. DIT is currently working with 39 of the top global e-marketplaces, such as Amazon and Alibaba, to give UK businesses access to a potential audience of 2 billion consumers. Preferential deals exclusive to clients referred by DIT have been negotiated by government with a number of these e-marketplaces, making the UK one of the easiest and best places from which to sell goods online.

Alongside our work to support British businesses to export, we will continue to be a champion of free trade. Inside the EU, the UK is one of the strongest advocates of free trade. Outside the EU, we will continue to be one of the strongest voices worldwide for free and open trade. My noble friend Lord Marland spoke of the importance of Commonwealth trading links. Later this week, DIT Ministers will meet their counterparts at the Commonwealth Trade Ministers’ meeting in London to discuss how we can best achieve continuity in our trading relationships once the UK leaves the EU, when we will have our own independent trade policy. I take this opportunity to pay tribute to noble Lords who have served as trade envoys, including my noble friend Lord Marland, for all the work that they do. In time, we will negotiate free trade agreements that will lower barriers to trade and create vital opportunities for UK businesses. We are keen to seize the opportunities that leaving the EU will present—as are many of our international partners who recognise the attractiveness of doing business with the UK.

I thank all noble Lords for their contributions over the course of this debate. In particular, I take note of its positive tone and of the phraseology of the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley: “can do”, “all pulling together” and “call to action”. That is exactly what we need as we move forward.

I will pick up a few more points. The noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, raised the importance and success of the trade envoy network. I am pleased to say that, as of March this year, trade envoys have made 44 visits to 31 markets of the kind he mentioned, including Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan. The noble Viscount was right to raise the issue of adequate data. The Department for International Trade is working with HMRC to ensure that we have the most robust data when it comes to identifying companies that are exporting and how we can target support effectively.

My noble friend Lord Patten is right that success is reliant on having the right talent in building relationships with business so that more can thrive in the global marketplace. The DIT is focused on continuing to hire, and keep, the brightest and best from Whitehall and the private sector.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, pointed out, it is right on International Women’s Day that the Government are focused on ensuring that we have a trade policy and export support that allow all people to benefit. As for small businesses, last year, 92% of the companies that DIT supported were SMEs.

The noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, made a point about the GREAT campaign. I, too, recognise the fantastic success of the project: through the Exporting is GREAT campaign, more than 20,000 responses have been registered to export opportunities published online since November 2016. The noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, made some other valid points. The Government believe that it is in everybody’s interests to arrive at a mutually beneficial deal. We are a great global nation with much to offer Europe and the world.

My noble friend Lord Dundee mentioned the importance of skills. I am pleased to point to the measures announced in today’s Budget on investment in England’s technical education to ensure that our companies have the talent to compete on the global stage, including the new T-levels.

I am aware that perhaps I have not been able to respond to all your Lordships’ points in full. If that is the case, I will write where required. The expertise of noble Lords will be invaluable to the Government on this important issue.

[Lord Marland]

I am sorry to interrupt my noble friend but she has not touched on my question about when the Government are going to respond to my letter about removing the error in the White Paper. I would be very grateful, if she is going to write to me, if we could get the letter this week, because the acknowledgement has been outstanding for some time and it is quite embarrassing for the Commonwealth, as the noble Lord, Lord Mendelsohn, quite correctly enunciated.

[Baroness Mobarik]

I fully take that on board. As I have said, there may be outstanding questions. I absolutely accept the question put by my noble friend Lord Marland and will definitely take it back and write in due course. I am sure that your Lordships’ House will continue to play an invaluable role in informing the Government on this crucial and important subject as we go forward.