Oral Answers to Questions

Felicity Buchan Excerpts

Thursday 2nd December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sir Robert Syms (Poole) (Con)]

14. What recent steps her Department has taken to increase the export of British financial services.

[Felicity Buchan (Kensington) (Con)]

15. What recent steps her Department has taken to increase the export of British financial services.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Trade (Mike Freer)]

With colleagues in the Treasury, we are committed to championing export opportunities for our world-class financial services sector. We have done this through targeted export campaigns supporting specific UK financial services, as well as through signing ambitious free trade agreements that are reducing market access barriers and opening new doors for great British businesses to sell their services worldwide.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Speaker]

It might have been easier just to say that!

[Felicity Buchan]

Financial services account for more than 10% of our total tax take and are responsible for more than 1 million jobs throughout the country. Financial services are important not only to my constituents in Kensington but to Scotland, including Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Glasgow, and to Newcastle, Leeds, Bristol and Chelmsford. Does my hon. Friend agree that financial services need to be priorities in all future trade agreements to secure best market access?

[Mike Freer]

We are absolutely committed to prioritising British financial services in FTAs. I am sure that my hon. Friend, as the Government’s trade envoy to Iceland and Norway—a role that she fulfils with her usual vigour—will be pleased to see our commitment in practice in the UK’s recently signed FTA with Norway, Iceland and Lichtenstein, which benefits financial services.