HC Deb 10 April 2002 vol 383 cc377-8W
Mr. Bercow

To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what the ranking of the United Kingdom is on the Department's International Benchmarking Study. [47346]

Ms Hewitt

The International Benchmarking Study 2001 was published in October 2001 and is available in the Libraries of the House. The 2002 study is being undertaken at the moment and will be published later this year. The 2001 study showed that the UK continues to be one of a 'leading' group of countries in the general use of e-commerce, along with the US, Canada and Germany. There is no single ranking figure used as the report contains many different facets of e-commerce uptake and development. However in 2001 there was an overall improvement in the UK's relative position against some key indicators—for exampleConnectivity: UK small and micro businesses now ranked third instead of fifth; Trading Online: UK micros up to third from fifth.