Question to the Department for International Trade:

To ask the Secretary of State for International Trade, what steps her Department has taken to increase services and digital trade.

Services are the predominant driver of the UK economy, contributing 80% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2019 and employing over 26 million people (approximately 80% of total employment). Our Free Trade Agreement (FTA) programme continually seeks a gold standard in services and digital trade, providing greater access to overseas markets for UK service businesses and making it easier to trade digitally.

Using our newly independent seat at the World Trade Organization (WTO), the UK is also actively engaged in a range of multilateral and plurilateral fora designed to further liberalise trade in services and create global rules for digital trade. Alongside the WTO, the UK also uses other multilateral groups such as the G7 and G20 to drive forward our ambitious trade agenda. Most recently, the UK led the G7’s first ever ‘trade track’, bringing countries together to agree a set of ground-breaking Digital Trade Principles.

The Department also has a range of programmes designed to help British companies export. The recently announced Export Strategy outlines our ambition for trade in services, supported by promoting the role of services and digital trade within our FTA negotiations. Export campaigns such as in Financial, Professional and Business Services and the Creative Industries encourage companies nationwide to increase services exports and the Digital Exporting Programme is helping UK companies increase exports through digital commerce.