Business: Exports

Lord Flight Excerpts

Thursday 6th July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

The EU agreed that deal with great support from the United Kingdom. We have made it very clear that we want to replicate such deals and potentially get even better terms for our markets. We have seen a tremendous increase in the value of exports over the past year—up by 5.8%, and up by 34.8% since 2010. We believe that we can do better than that outside the European Union.

[Lord Flight (Con)]

My Lords, will the Government look at arrangements for the financing of exports in comparison to both the US and France? This country is much less helpful and, post-ECGD being privatised, quite a few businesses still find it difficult to get exports financed.

[Lord Bates]

My noble friend will be aware, of course, that the export finance levels were doubled by the Chancellor in the Autumn Statement last year. That will be a significant increase. Some 279 companies had access to export finance and more than 70% of those were small and medium-sized enterprises—precisely the sorts of organisations that we need to encourage to do more.