I have to be careful here, because I do not want to get into a constitutional minefield. After all, trade is a devolved matter; we have devolved the interface—or what we call the international trade adviser—aspects and, as a result, this is a shared enterprise. Our product range is a national one, and we deliver it nationally; obviously, our overseas network, too, is national. That means that responsibility for the underperformance of UKTI as a whole with regard to exports lies, if it lies anywhere, with UKTI.
The exports picture is a mixed one, and I do not think that it is strictly true to say that there is a problem with the take-up of services by UK firms. It is worth pointing out that, over the past three years, UKTI has increased the number of firms that it interacts with from around 25,000 to 50,000 companies. I do not know how old the survey that you quoted is, but our reach is growing. We have increased the number of mid-sized businesses that we deal with from 1,000 to 3,000. As I have said, 97 per cent of our customers are either SMEs or mid-sized businesses, and we have doubled the size of our reach in that sector.
There is quite a good tale to tell of the Government’s engagement with export. The resources that the Government has put into export promotion and business support assistance have grown quite significantly.
We are not seeing quite yet the sort of numbers that we would like to see in export growth to get us to our real target, which is to double exports in the UK from £500 billion to £1 trillion, because that would require a growth rate of around 10 or 12 per cent. However, we are seeing some growth, which we must put into the context of the recent economic situation. A lot of our main export markets, particularly in Europe, have suffered some serious difficulties.
We should also take into account that, when we are providing business support and trying to convince companies to start exporting, a lot of the time the impact in actual exports is not immediate. This is a long-term play.
We need to get the next generation of exporters exporting. We need to get 100,000 new companies exporting in the UK. Those are quite stretching targets, but our levels of aspiration are high, the resources that we are putting into it are high and the number of companies that we are dealing with is growing.