HC Deb 18 December 2001 vol 377 cc260-1W
Mr. Bercow

To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what estimate she has made of the number of small businesses in the constituency of Buckingham that are trading online. [22530]

Nigel Griffiths

The latest figures from the E-commerce International Benchmarking Studies—2001, which monitors business use of information communication technologies in the UK, shows that 540,000 small and medium enterprises are trading online in the UK.

The 'Study' does not break this figure down to constituency levels. However, it does confirm that we are making significant progress towards our aim of making the UK the best place in the world to trade online. For example, the target of having 1.5 million small businesses wired up to the digital marketplace by 2002 was achieved last year and continues to increase with 1.9 million now connected.