Small and Medium-sized Enterprises: Public Procurement Contracts

Lord Fowler Excerpts

Monday 7th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

Each government department publishes its own SME action plan, which describes how it is engaging better with the SME sector to address the department’s own needs and increase spend with SMEs. Particular departments hold early-market engagement events to explain and discuss their requirements with a wide range of suppliers.

[The Lord Speaker (Lord Fowler)]

Short questions, please.

[Lord Lucas (Con) [V]]

My Lords, could my noble friend please tell me what departments are doing to make sure that SMEs can get on the preferred list of companies—where departments use this—and that the buyers within those departments are rewarded for making the extra effort to deal with small suppliers and are not risking their own careers by doing so?

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[Lord Callanan (Con)]

The noble Baroness asks a good question. Unfortunately, we do not gather data on how many UK SMEs are involved in EU procurements. However, there will, of course, be a high level of access to markets in the EU once the UK has joined the WTO general procurement agreement as an independent member. This is expected to be at the beginning of 2021. The UK’s market access offer for services is the same as the current coverage under the EU’s GPA schedule. Reciprocal coverage will continue once the UK is a GPA party.

[The Lord Speaker (Lord Fowler)]

I call the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Needham Market. Baroness Scott? No? We will go on. I call the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con) [V]]

My Lords, can I ask my noble friend the Minister what opportunities there will be for small and medium-sized businesses in the food sector to bid for contracts to deliver food to schools, hospitals, prisons and other public sector services? This is a wonderful opportunity to have locally produced food locally delivered for local consumption.

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[Lord Callanan (Con)]

If we heard the noble Baroness correctly as she was interrupted, I think she was asking about the bureaucracy associated with public sector procurement contracts. We have removed complex pre-qualification questionnaires from low-value contracts and increased the transparency of opportunities via the Contracts Finder website, which covers current and future public sector contracts and award notices above £10,000 in central government and £25,000 in the wider public sector. Contracts Finder is available on a single, free-to-use digital platform and we encourage all SMEs to access it.

[The Lord Speaker (Lord Fowler)]

My Lords, all supplementary questions have been asked, fortunately, and we now move to the second Oral Question.