Asked by: Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Conservative - The Cotswolds)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, what UK Trade and Investment's annual budget is for work in Europe.
Answered by Anna Soubry
It is not possible fully to disaggregate UK Trade and Investment’s budget for all its work in each overseas market. The overall budget will be made up of costs incurred in country and funds that are not market specific.
Asked by: Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Conservative - The Cotswolds)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of co-ordinating the objectives of Innovate UK and UKTI in order to increase exports.
Answered by Anna Soubry
Increasing exports, to all overseas markets, is a key factor in the Government’s long-term economic plan. UK Trade & Investment (UKTI) and Innovate UK work together to co-ordinate activity to promote UK innovation and to help drive the UK's productivity, exports and long-term growth through increasing trade and inward investment in science and innovation. An Innovate UK secondee further augments the activities of both organisations.
This work supports UK businesses looking to take advantage of overseas opportunities and to create a strong business environment that allows them to flourish both at home and overseas. This includes working together on events and entrepreneur missions to promote the UK’s innovative companies on a global scale, identifying export opportunities and securing new markets. Innovate UK funded projects and companies are referred to UKTI trade advisers to help support international planning and exports. To date 250 companies have been referred.
Asked by: Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Conservative - The Cotswolds)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of the introduction of a mentoring scheme for businesses who wish to export to a country or region that partners such businesses with other businesses that export to that country or region.
Answered by Anna Soubry
Lord Maude made a statement to the House of Lords on Tuesday 19 January on the Government’s strategy to support trade. The new operating model set out in the statement will see UK Trade & Investment start to pilot schemes that provide direct support to businesses over the coming months.
There are no plans to pilot a mentoring scheme. Instead, UKTI will continue to identify opportunities to connect UK businesses via the mentorsme network, Britain’s first online gateway for small and medium sized enterprises looking for mentoring services. This service offers businesses free access to a list of quality-assured business mentoring organisations across Britain.
Asked by: Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Conservative - The Cotswolds)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of benchmarking UKTI's performance against that of other countries' export agencies.
Answered by Anna Soubry
There is considerable merit in understanding how our competitors’ export agencies are structured and the services they offer. This is something the Exports Implementation Taskforce, which the Secretary of State chairs, looked at in some depth in developing a whole-of-Government approach to exports. This included, UK Trade & Investment participating in a formal benchmarking exercise by the International Trade Centre.
Among the key things found from these comparative reviews is that UKTI employs more people than other countries’ export promotion agencies, but deploys less resource on practical support for exporters (such as interim export managers). Learning from this, UKTI is currently developing some small-scale direct practical support services and products to see what might work in the UK.