A cross-party House of Lords committee urged agencies to step up efforts to ensure small and medium enterprises (SMEs) were made fully aware of what was available to them.

It said it was shocked at how few of the five million such firms had been helped by UK Export Finance. UKEF is the operating name of the Export Credits Guarantee Department and provides guarantees, insurance and reinsurance against loss.

Unless banks – which act as gatekeepers to the scheme – were also made more aware, however, such activities were "dead in the water", the report said.