Question to the Department for Business and Trade:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, what assumptions his Department uses in relation to trade elasticities when modelling the long-term effects of UK accession to plurilateral digital trade agreements.

The Department for Business and Trade has not undertaken modelling of the long-term effects of UK accession to plurilateral digital trade agreements. Consequently, no assumptions regarding trade elasticities have been applied in this context.

The OECD has published analysis on the potential economic impacts of concluding the WTO’s Joint Initiative on E-Commerce. However, this analysis is not UK-specific.