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Small Businesses: Exports

Asked by Callum AndersonLabourTreasuryTabled Answered 18 September 2025UIN 76724

The question

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, how many small and medium-sized enterprises in (a) the UK and (b) Buckingham and Bletchley constituency have exported to China in the last three years.

Answered by Dan Tomlinson

HMRC releases information as Official Statistics called the Trade in Goods by Business Characteristics, which is available via gov.uk. (www.uktradeinfo.com).

Trade in Goods by Business Characteristics includes exports to certain pre-selected Partner Countries that includes China. This data includes exports by Business Size (Number of employees) broken down by the following categories: 0; 1 to 9; 10 to 49; 50 to 249; 250+; Unknown. The user will be able to work out SME by aggregating the first four categories in this list.

Links to the relevant releases for 2021, 2022, and 2023 are below (see tab “2. Business Size” on each release):

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/637ce265d3bf7f5a0b33f87f/UK_TIG_by_Business_Characteristics_2021_Country_Tables.xlsx

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6554d441d03a8d001207f9a7/UK_TIG_by_Business_Characteristics_2022_Country_Level_Tables.xlsx

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6734b5f4f6920bfb5abc7a75/UK_TIG_by_Business_Characteristics_2023_Country_Level_Tables.xlsx

The release for 2024 data will be published on 27 November 2025.

The breakdown by Business Size (Number of Employees) is not available for areas smaller than UK as a whole.

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