Question to the Department for International Trade:

To ask the Secretary of State for International Trade, what steps she is taking with the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to help support small businesses that are not eligible to participate in the UK Tradeshow Programme to develop commercial relationships.

Our Export Strategy has a range of measures to support small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to increase their exports. It includes initiatives such as the Export Champions, which facilitates peer-to-peer learning between businesses, allowing them to learn through exporting success stories and build business networks.

Our UK-wide Export Academy delivers webinars and events to build the exporting capabilities of small businesses, while also centrally coordinating the Department for International Trade’s capability building activities, including building effective networks and in 2021/22 UK Export Finance provided £7.4bn in support for UK exports, directly supporting 545 UK businesses, of which 81% were SMEs.