Electronic Trade Documents Act 2023

Lord McFall of Alcluith Excerpts

Thursday 14th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Offord of Garvel (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness for that question. I can assure her that this is a great focus for the Department for Business and Trade. At the moment in the UK, only 10% of our SMEs are exporting. Overall, we are a great exporting nation; we have recently gone from sixth to fifth in the table, and we are second in services, so we have a strong export tradition, but we could do better among our SME community. My personal ambition is to drive that number up, and digital has a key part to play in that. There are some 280,000 SMEs exporting. We want to double that, and the digital route will be the way to do so. We have already identified 100,000 essentially new business which are born digital and born international, which will be a great boost to the SME trade. That will be a great focus for our department going forward.

[The Lord Speaker (Lord McFall of Alcluith)]

My Lords, we have a virtual contribution from the noble Baroness, Lady Harris of Richmond.

[Baroness Harris of Richmond (LD) [V]]

My Lords, in a letter to Peers in June, the Minister, the noble Viscount, Lord Camrose, stated

“industry stands ready and eager to support the delivery of this Act for UK businesses of all shapes and sizes, developing guidance and standards to ensure it’s a success”.

Notwithstanding the Minister’s response, how are the Government actually working with industry, as well as others he mentioned, to ensure this? Should not we now have more detail about the implementation of the Act?