Question to the Department for Business and Trade:

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the role of AI tools integrated in e-commerce platforms in supporting productivity growth of small and medium-sized enterprises; and what impact that assessment has on their strategy for digital adoption by UK businesses.

AI tools integrated into e-commerce platforms can help small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to become more productive by automating routine tasks and improving data-based decision-making, for example on marketing, customer service and stock management.

The Department for Business and Trade is committed to increasing SME digital capability and AI confidence and is implementing the SME Digital Adoption Taskforce recommendations to address barriers such as lack of information, resources and skills. This includes convening industry roundtables to partner on delivering more, running local digital adoption pilots to test what support works best as well as linking up with the Business Growth Service to improve SME access to existing support.