Michael Dugher
Main Page: Michael Dugher (Labour - Barnsley East)Department Debates - View all Michael Dugher's debates with the Cabinet Office
(11 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Miss Smith
I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s focus on this matter. He will welcome our review on some of the companies he has named, but it is most important to say that the Government are on track to deliver our aspiration of awarding 25% of central Government business to SMEs by 2015. We look for that directly and through the supply chain, and that is what helps us to procure for growth in this country.
Michael Dugher (Barnsley East) (Lab)
In a recent speech at an event called “Transforming Technology Procurement through SMEs”, the Minister for the Cabinet Office said with typical understatement that the Government were
“entering a new world for government technology procurement”
and launching
“radical reforms to increase opportunities for SME suppliers”.
Why, then, according to freedom of information requests submitted by ComputerWeekly, has only 0.52% of all the IT procurement spend for the Government’s beleaguered universal credit programme gone to SMEs?
Miss Smith
It continues to be pretty rich for the hon. Gentleman to come to this Dispatch Box when he and his Government did absolutely nothing to count the spend with SMEs when they were in government.