UK Exports

Baroness Lane-Fox of Soho Excerpts

Wednesday 8th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lane-Fox of Soho (CB)]

I, too, thank the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, for initiating this debate. I do not know him well but I already like him for having had the forethought to secure it on International Women’s Day—and not only that but for having secured a stellar international female Minister to reply to the debate. I would like to tell noble Lords about some data that were released today from the ScaleUp Institute, of which I am a trustee, started by the indomitable Sherry Coutu.

There are 1,000 businesses run by women in this country that are fuelling the growth of the economy. Together, they are contributing £15 billion to our economy. They range in size and scale from £1 million to more than £100 million and they are what she and we at the institute term “scale-up businesses”. I challenge the Government to pay more attention to these female-led businesses. In particular, helping them to export could be very easy, low-hanging fruit to quickly grow our markets.

Of the nearly 1,000 businesses that have been identified by the ScaleUp Institute in its work today, more than 870 have seen 30% growth year on year; 553 have seen 20% growth year on year; and 343 have seen 50% growth year on year. These are big numbers, all being driven across the country in many different sectors. Surprisingly, London is not the centre of these businesses: the Thames Valley and Buckinghamshire lead the way, followed closely by the Midlands, with London in third place. This is heartening when we hear so much about certainly my sector, the digital sector, coming from London only.

These are not just digital businesses, either. They are in leisure, hospitality, services, recruitment—even IT, I was surprised to see. So there is a huge opportunity to help these businesses grow: 84% of the CEOs said that they would like to be included on government trade missions and that exporting was one of their top three priorities. There is a huge amount that could be done if we could take the women away from their daily work, show them different markets and help them learn how to sell.

I have three quick suggestions. First, can the Government please include more women in their trade missions from this cohort which have been identified as high-growth businesses? Secondly, can we have better university courses for women to learn how to package their products and do trade deals? I mucked up many expansions at lastminute.com; it is difficult and it would very valuable if there were more rigorous university courses. Finally, could we have incentives for foreign investment into these female-led businesses, since they really are on the fast track to growth?

I feel enormously encouraged. I know there is a lot of doom and gloom, potentially, as we have this debate, but here is a set of 1,000 businesses growing at a rate of knots that want to be trading across the world. I know that the noble Lord has interests in Mongolia and across central Asia. I travelled there over six months in my gap year before university, ambling around being useless. Rather than encouraging more Marthas to go and be useless in Mongolia, let us encourage more women to do important trade deals with these important countries.