Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Georgia Gould and James Wild(4 weeks, 2 days ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Georgia Gould
When our public services are facing so much strain and desperately need rebuilding, it is critical that we cut waste and deliver value for money. Under the last Government the procurement system too often failed to drive that efficiency, as was shown by the shocking levels of fraud and waste during the pandemic. We will bring new transparency to public sector procurement, along with a relentless focus on fraud.
James Wild (North West Norfolk) (Con)
Gross spending on public procurement was £400 billion last year. What is the Government’s precise target for delivering greater savings from that budget?
Georgia Gould
That £400 billion is an enormous amount of money, and we need to ensure that it is going into growth, delivering for our communities and SMEs, and delivering on our missions. We are determined to act on procurement and reduce inefficiency, and we will provide further information about that in February. We cannot take lessons from the Conservative party about cutting waste inefficiencies, given that they oversaw gross mismanagement—Lord Agnew himself referred to “schoolboy errors”—in the delivery of procurement for this country.