§ Baroness Nicolasked Her Majesty's Government:
What are their plans for a new export initiative.
§ Lord Clinton-DavisThis Government are committed to helping British companies to trade successfully overseas and to the launch of a new export initiative.
As promised in our business manifesto, we need to ensure that those export promotion programmes currently in place are targeted in the most effective way at the needs of British industry. As a first stage, the DTI and the FCO will set up a new export forum—a working group, with representation from Whitehall and from business, to carry out a full assessment of how well these programmes work. This group will look at the strengths and weaknesses of official support for trade fairs, trade missions, identifying sales leads, export marketing research, UK firms bidding for overseas projects and other export promotion activities. It will examine the current arrangements for interdepartmental consultation, the current arrangements for consultation with business, the interface between the overseas trade services and business links, the present system for establishing market and sectoral priorities and the marketing and branding of official export promotion services.
I will be asking the group to report by the autumn with their recommendations.