Oral Answers to Questions

Danny Kruger Excerpts

Thursday 11th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Miriam Cates (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Con)]

What steps the Government are taking to increase opportunities for small businesses to bid for Government contracts.

[Danny Kruger (Devizes) (Con)]

What steps he is taking to reform Government procurement to boost (a) local growth and (b) the small and medium-sized enterprises sector.

[Caroline Ansell (Eastbourne) (Con)]

What steps the Government are taking to increase opportunities for small businesses to bid for Government contracts.

--- Later in debate ---

[Julia Lopez]

Absolutely. I know that my hon. Friend, as someone who has run a business herself, understands the bureaucratic frustrations that too many of her constituency businesses come up against. We want public buyers to divide contracts into more accessible lots and allow them to reserve contracts under a certain threshold for small, innovative firms. We are also pushing ambitious targets on prompt payment, and we aim to simplify the bidding process so that it does not favour big firms, which inevitably have greater resources to devote to form-filling and box-ticking.

[Danny Kruger [V]]

I welcome the recent Green Paper setting out the freedoms that the UK now enjoys to create a new framework for public procurement, including a new exceptional power for public bodies to commission for wider public benefit. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need to go further and make this exception the norm, ensuring more joined-up services and better overall outcomes for the public? Otherwise, we will be getting only half the Brexit dividend that we could in the field of procurement, with freedoms but not the actual implementation.

[Julia Lopez]

My hon. Friend is quite right. Our proposed procurement reforms will not in themselves deliver change unless commercial teams across the public sector actually understand how to deploy them to greatest effect. That is why we are introducing a programme of training for contracting authorities. On the matter of wider public benefit, I refer him to our social value model. We do not want to award only to those that make the cheapest bid; we also want to award to firms that offer value for money in a much broader sense, including to the community in which the service is being delivered. I know that is something he cares very passionately about, given his thoughtful review on a new social covenant.