Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Mary Glindon and Caroline Nokes

Wednesday 11th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)]

5. What assessment he has made of recent trends in the level of Government procurement from small and medium-sized enterprises.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Cabinet Office (Caroline Nokes)]

We will shortly publish the latest small and medium-sized enterprises’ spending performance figures. The Government remain committed to a challenging target to ensure that a third of their procurement spending is with small businesses by 2022, and we are continuing to take action to achieve that.

[Mary Glindon]

Following a recent report by the Federation of Small Businesses, will the Minister tell the House whether she intends to issue guidance requiring local authorities to increase their use of dynamic purchasing systems so that small businesses are not locked out from lists of potential suppliers to those authorities?

[Caroline Nokes]

The hon. Lady has always been a doughty champion of the spreading down of procurement practices to local government so that it, too, encourages more SMEs to take part in the process. We have issued guidance to local authorities on how local government can support SMEs, and have legislated to ban burdensome pre-qualification questionnaires for low-value contracts.