Oral Answers to Questions

Elliot Colburn Excerpts

Thursday 25th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Julie Marson (Hertford and Stortford) (Con)]

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

[Elliot Colburn (Carshalton and Wallington) (Con)]

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

[Sir David Evennett (Bexleyheath and Crayford) (Con)]

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

--- Later in debate ---

[Julia Lopez]

We are looking all the time at how we innovate in public procurement. Some of my hon. Friend’s query might be better addressed by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy or Her Majesty’s Treasury, but we hope that the improvements that we are proposing will open up many more opportunities to SMEs. She might also be interested in existing programmes such as the small business research initiative, which funds organisations to conduct challenge-based R&D to develop products or services that address a specific unmet public sector need.

[Elliot Colburn [V]]

I thank the Minister for her response. May I invite her to come and visit Carshalton and Wallington post pandemic to meet some of the small and medium-sized businesses that are keen to bid for Government contracts, to hear their concerns about the process and to encourage more to look at opportunities to do so?

[Julia Lopez]

I would be very happy to do so. My hon. Friend understands that the Government have tremendous buying power, which we think we can use to drive the recovery. We want to use our procurement reforms to open up many more opportunities to SMEs. We are doing that in a range of ways, which I have discussed, but we also have a new social value model, which explicitly allows greater weight to be given to those bids that will help to drive the post-covid economic recovery.