Question to the Department for Business and Trade:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, with reference to Government transparency data entitled DIT: spending over £25,000 for November 2022, for what purpose her Department spent £28,000 on corporate event management and marketing at the British Fashion Council on 29 November 2022.

The Department for Business and Trade supported the British Fashion Council’s (BFC) international designer initiative ‘London Show Rooms’, which takes London’s leading emerging fashion talents to Paris, to maximise export potential for creative businesses at the primary industry trade event. It provides a unique opportunity for the British designers to promote themselves to a global buying audience outside London. The pop-up showroom is a strategic element of the BFC’s support and mentoring scheme; and is a space for designers to sell their collections and grow their export business with the support of international marketing, media and sales advisers.