UK Trade

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Popat]

I thank my noble friend for endorsing my appointment and for giving me the privilege to answer, for the first time, one of his Questions. I turn to the Business Secretary’s foreword to the 2011 trade White Paper, where he says that we must,

“restate the case for open markets”,

and resist,

“the temptation to put up trade and investment barriers”.

I agree that we should take action to support domestic industries, and we are doing this through the growth review and industrial strategy, and by providing help and advice to exporters, in particular our SMEs.

[Lord Bilimoria]

My Lords, I welcome the noble Lord to the Front Benches. I have seen, as the founding chairman of the UK India Business Council, the help that the UK Government give through UK Trade & Investment to businesses to export. However, can the noble Lord tell us what more the Government are doing to help exporting, particularly to BRIC countries, and explain why UK Export Finance levels of finance seem to have fallen and there is very little take-up of new UK Export Finance products?

[Lord Popat]

The noble Lord asks a very interesting question that covers a wide range of subjects. Let me start with emerging markets. The world has changed; we are repositioning ourselves again and emerging markets are key for us—we give them a special priority. Within those emerging markets are the BRIC countries. I know the noble Lord’s interest and I pay tribute to his work for UKIBC. I was in India two weeks ago with UKTI, our excellent high commissioner in Delhi and a UKIBC colleague of the noble Lord’s. They work with India to make sure that we double our exports there by working with large numbers of corporations both in the UK and in India.

To answer the third part of the noble Lord’s question, insurance is being looked at and reviewed. I agree that we need to make a number of schemes available to our exporters, and it is up to UKTI—as it is well aware—to make the people who export aware of it, too.