EU Council Debate

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Department: Cabinet Office

EU Council

Nick de Bois Excerpts
Monday 28th October 2013

(11 years, 1 month ago)

Commons Chamber
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Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton Portrait The Prime Minister
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My hon. Friend has made an important point. Given that 400,000 net new small businesses have been created since the Government came to power, we should be trying—at both European and UK level—to exclude micro-businesses altogether from some of these classes of regulation.

Nick de Bois Portrait Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)
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Businesses throughout the country will welcome the Prime Minister’s drive to cut barriers to growth. Does he agree that one simple and effective way of doing just that would be to change the current public procurement thresholds in the EU, thus releasing more opportunities? Did he discuss such action, and will he continue to press for it?

Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton Portrait The Prime Minister
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We did not discuss public procurement on this occasion but it is worth looking at. One of the things that the Government are looking at domestically is whether we can get rid of a lot of these pre-qualification questionnaires to make it far easier for businesses to compete for Government contracts.