Small Businesses

Andrew Bingham Excerpts

Thursday 28th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Chloe Smith (Norwich North) (Con)]

I think that this is my first opportunity to congratulate you on taking the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker. I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris) on securing the debate and all those who supported her at the Backbench Business Committee. To pick up on just one of the points that she made, I agree about the difficulties that are presented by the VAT threshold, which I saw recently in the case of a meals on wheels business that serves my constituents. It is just about to hit the threshold, but its customers are ill-equipped to deal with a hike in prices.

Like my hon. Friend, I look forward to celebrating small business Saturday in my constituency. I also look forward to a discussion that will take place shortly at Norwich business school, whose advisory board I sit on, about how such business schools can be anchor institutions for the small firms in their surrounding area.

In the report, “Growing Your Business”, Lord Young of Graffham drew out just how much more there is to do to open up public procurement to small and medium-sized firms. My hon. Friend the Member for Newton Abbot mentioned the Cabinet Office at the end of her comprehensive list, and I am sure that she would join me in congratulating the Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General on his work to give 25% of Government business to small and medium-sized enterprises. Surprisingly, it is often forgotten that the Government buy large quantities of goods and services on behalf of taxpayers, and there is no reason why small and medium-sized businesses should not take pride of place in that marketplace.

[Andrew Bingham (High Peak) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that small businesses find it difficult to deal with Government agencies because they are presented with a bewildering array of things such as pre-qualification questionnaires? Small and micro-businesses do not have a huge army of staff to deal with such nonsense, which increases costs not only for business, but for the Government, because they could have bought what they needed cheaper from a small business in the first place.

[Chloe Smith]

My hon. Friend could not have made a better intervention because I was pleased to be able to contribute to solving that exact problem when I was a Cabinet Office Minister.

Given a few tools, we can all do much more in our constituencies, and Lord Young is continuing to work on that issue in association with my hon. Friend the Minister for Skills and Enterprise. We must encourage small and medium-sized firms to use Contracts Finder, on which they will find a clear record of all available Government contracts. We should urge local authorities and others to put their contracts on that portal to allow the operation of a comprehensive marketplace.

We should also encourage constituency businesses to use the mystery shopper scheme that the Cabinet Office has introduced, which will help to solve the problem raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Newton Abbot. When small businesses that seek simply to get on and do business encounter poor practice or communication from the public sector, they need a way to solve the problem. The mystery shopper scheme does exactly that, and also gives us a chance to do more to encourage public authorities—whether local government, health, police or fire services, or any similar service—to do more to make their procurement SME-friendly.

Small firms can encounter many problems such as the prevalence of pre-qualification questionnaires and late payment. A care company in my constituency deals with customers who are particularly vulnerable, and tragic havoc can be wrought if a health body makes a late payment to such a company. The motion rightly calls on local government to do its part, and I suggest that better procurement forms an important part of that.