Public Services: Security of Provision

Lord Brookman Excerpts

Wednesday 19th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, one cannot entirely eliminate financial risk either from private or public sector providers so long as public sector providers have a degree of financial and accounting autonomy. We have seen that in a number of public sector cases as well as in private sector cases. The Government are taking considerable care in contracting to ensure that we look at the financial viability of all suppliers and, in particular, do our best to encourage small and medium enterprises and social enterprises to be able to bid for public service contracts. That takes rather more sophistication than dealing simply with major suppliers.

[Lord Brookman]

My Lords—

[Baroness Eaton]

My Lords, does my noble friend agree that one of the best ways of helping businesses, particularly small and medium enterprises, is to scrap complex and unnecessary central prescription around the commissioning process? Will he detail what the Government are doing to simplify the systems that businesses have struggled with for so many years?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I understand that one of the problems particularly for smaller companies and social enterprises bidding for public sector contracts was the prequalification questionnaire, a document which might have been somewhere between 50 and 300 pages long and led to some smaller enterprises simply deciding not to bid. We have now scrapped that and made a much simpler and shorter alternative. We are adjusting the way in which the many hundreds of contracting authorities within the public sector deal with those with whom they operate, but I underline that we are concerned as far as possible to assist mutuals, social enterprises and small companies in playing their role in providing public services wherever possible.

[Lord Brookman]

My Lords—

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon]

My Lords, there are all sorts of pressures on Ministers’ diaries, especially at the moment, but does the Minister agree that it was not acceptable for his honourable friend Mr Burstow to cite diary pressures as a reason for not meeting the financially insecure Southern Cross for discussions, when these were repeatedly asked for by the company and when it was providing a public service by providing homes for 31,000 vulnerable people?