UK Exports

Lord Haskel Excerpts

Wednesday 8th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Haskel (Lab)]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, that, after Brexit, it will be more important than ever to get British business trading with the world. I join the British Chambers of Commerce in regretting that there was no new support for exporters in today’s Budget.

The Government’s current efforts to help exporters and deal with supply-chain problems deal largely with manufacturing, the more tangible part of our economy. But slowly and surely, it is the intangible part of our economy that has been growing and by some accounts now absorbs more investment than manufacturing. So I put it to the Minister that it is just as important to help our exports in knowledge and software, in know-how and data, in networks and branding, in aesthetic content, individually and in their many combinations—sometimes together with manufacturing—because this is the way international business is going.

The Starbucks franchise is an export as important as a tangible product, with its quality standards, systems, algorithms, branding and all the other things contained in the Starbucks franchise book.

In our economic data, these intangibles are lumped together with services. According to government data, we are a net exporter of services to the EU 27, with a surplus of €28.8 billion. But according to Eurostat, the EU 27 have a surplus of €30.1 billion on their exports of services to the UK. These figures are for 2015 from a paper published last month. Perhaps the Minister can tell us who is right, or are we just counting differently?

In their help to exporters, Ministers should recognise the growing importance of intangible exports and digital goods. If we are to help exporters in this sector, which is of growing importance for our export businesses, we really have to understand what is going on. Do not listen to just me: Sir Charles Bean made this point in his report to the Government on intangible investment. What will the Government do to help and understand this sector? As the noble Viscount said, we cannot just go on with business as usual. We have to move with the times.