Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what steps he is taking to improve economic relations with countries within the Commonwealth.

The UK is committed to improving economic relations and strengthening our commercial diplomacy across the Commonwealth. To that end, we welcome and look forward to working with, the new Commonwealth Enterprise and Investment Council (CEIC), under the chairmanship of Lord Marland of Odstock and based in London. We expect Lord Marland's involvement will help the CEIC towards increased trade and investment across the Commonwealth.

At the same time, UK Trade and Investment (UKTI) is helping strengthen trade links with markets across the world that are key to the UK's future prosperity and is now represented in over 20 Commonwealth countries. These include high growth markets such as India, Singapore, South Africa and Malaysia, and others such as Canada, Australia and New Zealand, where we already have significant and well established trading relations. We are also working hard to ensure the EU signs ambitious Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) with Commonwealth countries to improve the access of UK companies to these markets. For example, negotiations on an EU/Canada Comprehensive and Economic Trade Agreement were completed in September and will benefit the UK economy and businesses by over £1.3billion a year. On 16 October the EU also finalised a FTA with Singapore, while talks with India are ongoing.

At this year’s Commonwealth Games in Glasgow UKTI, the Scottish Government, Scottish Enterprise and the Commonwealth Business Council worked together to deliver a business conference for 200 Commonwealth business leaders. UKTI also organised a British Business House, which showcased UK plc to Commonwealth businesses.