Oral Answers to Questions

Nick de Bois Excerpts

Wednesday 4th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hurd]

The Government take the whole issue of cybercrime incredibly seriously. I am not sure that we are going to take any lectures on trust in public statistics from the Labour party; the reason the UK Statistics Authority is in place is because public trust in Government statistics cratered after 13 years of Labour, for ever associated with the dark arts of spin and media manipulation.

[Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)]

3. What steps he is taking to ensure that more small and medium-sized companies win business from Government.

[Julian Sturdy (York Outer) (Con)]

4. What steps he is taking to ensure that more small and medium-sized companies win business from Government.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Miss Chloe Smith)]

It is this Government’s policy to dismantle the barriers facing small and medium-sized companies to ensure that they can compete for contracts on a level playing field and grow. I refer the House to the letter I sent last month to all hon. Members, in which I set out some of the progress we have made and the further steps we will be taking to ensure that Departments continue to increase their spend with small companies.

[Nick de Bois]

I am grateful for the Minister’s answer and I welcome her reforms to Government procurement processes, which are a marked improvement on the previous Government’s efforts. However, will she share her Department’s best practice with local government, which is still issuing cumbersome and complicated tenders that are excluding so many SMEs from competing for business because of the amount of time that they have to put into them?

[Miss Smith]

I welcome that support from my hon. Friend, who is extremely active on these matters in trying to secure more jobs, particularly in his constituency. He rightly says that we have a clear job, which we will do: to transfer the successful procurement reforms that we have made in central Government to the wider public sector. We are accepting the recommendations made in Lord Young’s “Growing Your Business” report, which deals with the complexity, cost and inconsistency that can face small businesses in the wider public sector.