The Department is not doing enough to help businesses, particularly SMEs, to take advantage of opportunities offered by new trade agreements. Businesses need to understand and take advantage of the opportunities arising from trade agreements if agreements are to deliver their predicted benefits. However, UK businesses’ use of existing agreements may be relatively low. For example, less than a third of surveyed UK businesses knew whether the goods they most frequently exported were eligible for reduced customs duties. We raised concerns in 2020 that the Department was not doing enough to support small and innovative businesses to export. The Department’s November 2021 export support strategy sets out a new approach, aiming to bring its export support services together in one place. To promote the new agreement with Japan, the Department conducted a virtual trade mission with around 250 businesses, but it could not tell us if this event had led to new export opportunities. Recommendation: The Department should write to the Committee within 12 months to set out how it has supported businesses, particularly SMEs, to take full advantage of existing and newly negotiated trade agreements. It should: i) regularly measure and report the preference utilisation rate for UK exports (the rate at which exporters use preferential tariffs) for each of its trade agreements; ii) consider how it can reduce burden and costs for SMEs; and iii) set out initial progress with its new export strategy.