Exports

Lord Sherbourne of Didsbury Excerpts

Wednesday 8th January 2014 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Sherbourne of Didsbury]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to encourage more United Kingdom businesses to export goods and services.

[The Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills & Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Lord Livingston of Parkhead) (Con)]

My Lords, the Government have significantly increased their support for exporters. UKTI expects to assist 40,000 businesses in this fiscal year, an increase of 50% over the past two years. The Government have also provided additional funding to increase support for exporters in key fast-growing markets such as India and China. In addition, the Chancellor recently announced a significant increase in UK Export Finance’s capacity to support our exporters.

[Lord Sherbourne of Didsbury (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome that. In particular, I welcome what my noble friend said just before Christmas about consulting medium-sized companies on what further help they might need. When he does that, will he have in mind the additional support that can and should be provided by chambers of commerce and other business organisations? Will he also look carefully at what lessons we can learn in that regard from other successful exporting countries such as Germany?

[Lord Livingston of Parkhead]

My noble friend makes a very good point. We have indeed looked at successful exporting countries such as Germany, Japan and the US. One feature in a number of them is, and has been over the past 20 or 30 years, the use of chambers to assist companies in overseas markets; we are indeed adopting this model. We have targeted 41 more-difficult-to-reach markets where chambers will assist us in providing support for particularly our smaller exporters, as well as the large companies that are often represented. In addition, we are looking at the success of middle-sized companies in Germany, where the UK does not do as well, and there will be a number of initiatives with them. In addition to the chambers, we are working closely with the Institute of Directors, the CBI and the Federation of Small Businesses—to name three organisations.