Oral Answers to Questions

Bill Esterson Excerpts

Wednesday 10th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Chloe Smith]

I agree with my hon. Friend and I am glad he has raised those points. My predecessor in this role, my hon. Friend the Member for Kingswood (Chris Skidmore), did excellent work in the Every Voice Matters project where he focused on this as a matter of social justice. Of course, the citizen—any citizen—should be at the heart of voting and able cast their vote as a matter of public service.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

6. What recent assessment he has made of the level of Government procurement from small businesses.

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Oliver Dowden)]

In November 2017, we published the 2015-16 figures for central Government Departments. The Government are fully committed to supporting our small businesses, which are the engine room of our economy, so we are continuing to take action to meet our target of a third of procurement being with small businesses by 2022.

[Bill Esterson]

Those 2015-16 figures show procurement to small and medium-sized enterprises to be falling, from 27% to 24%. The majority goes through indirect procurement, so is not the truth that wholesale changes are needed in a Government procurement system that just delivers crumbs from the table of large contractors to SMEs?

[Oliver Dowden]

The hon. Gentleman is right to highlight the fact that this is a challenging target, but, as I said previously, we set a challenging target in 2010 and we met it by the end of the Parliament. I am confident that we will meet our target again. In particular, we will be taking further measures in relation to SMEs. We will use transparency to encourage large businesses to employ more SMEs and make prompt payment part of the selection process for larger suppliers, which is the point that he raised. I can tell the House that we will be bringing forward proposals on that very shortly.