Oral Answers to Questions

Greg Mulholland Excerpts

Wednesday 25th March 2015 Commons Chamber

The Minister for the Cabinet Office was asked—

[Greg Mulholland (Leeds North West) (LD)]

1. What steps he is taking to support small businesses through public procurement.

[Mr William Bain (Glasgow North East) (Lab)]

7. What steps he is taking to improve access to Government procurement by small and medium-sized enterprises.

[The Minister for Civil Society (Mr Rob Wilson)]

Over the past five years, we have implemented a wide range of measures to open up the way we do business to make sure that small companies are in the best possible position to compete for contracts. These measures include increasing transparency, making opportunities more accessible, removing unnecessary bureaucracy, improving payment terms and clamping down on poor practice.

[Greg Mulholland]

I thank the Minister for that answer. He will be aware of the report of the Public Administration Committee that showed that at the time not enough was being done. Does he accept that there still needs to be a real culture change in the civil service to open up Government procurement to small and medium-sized enterprises?

[Mr Wilson]

We have obviously made a lot of progress and there is more to do, but we intend to extend and embed the reforms that we have made over the past five years. I would just remind my hon. Friend that at the last general election, only 6.5% of direct central Government procurement spend was with smaller businesses, and we had no idea how much was spent in the supply chain, so we have made huge progress.