Question to the Department for International Trade:

To ask the Secretary of State for International Trade, what steps the Government is taking to ensure small and micro businesses can continue to trade seamlessly with countries outside of the EU from 1 January 2021.

HM Government has now signed, or agreed in principle, trade agreements with 53 countries – accounting for £164 billion of the United Kingdom’s bilateral trade in 2019. We are working to make further progress before the end of the Transition Period, and beyond.

We will continue to seek to include specific small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) chapters in all of our future Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) to make sure that SMEs are provided with the information necessary to take informed commercial decisions – and seize the great new opportunities created by these agreements.