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Small Businesses: Exports

Asked by Callum AndersonLabourDepartment for Business and TradeTabled Answered 16 September 2025UIN 72272

The question

To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, what mechanisms his Department uses to evaluate the effectiveness of export support services for SMEs.

Answered by Blair McDougall

DBT offers a range of support for SME’s, with the recent Small Business Plan unlocking billions of pounds in finance to support businesses to invest and revitalising the High Street as a place to do business. The new online Business Growth Service will deliver support for Digital Adoption and AI to unlock business potential. And our Trade Strategy offers a more targeted approach to export support, including the launch of the Ricardo Fund to help UK regulators remove regulatory barriers for businesses trading abroad.

DBT has a robust monitoring and evaluation framework in place for export support and the Trade Strategy. The data will be published in DBT's Annual Report.

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