Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Nick Hurd and David Ruffley(14 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr David Ruffley (Bury St Edmunds) (Con)
3. What steps he is taking to increase the participation of voluntary and charitable bodies in bidding processes for Government contracts.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Nick Hurd)
The Office for Civil Society will shortly publish a consultation on what changes need to be made to commissioning to make it easier for voluntary and community sector organisations to compete for public contracts. The results will feed into a wider public services reform White Paper, which is due to published early in the new year.
Mr Ruffley
I am grateful to the Minister. On 13 November, I chaired a summit meeting of the chief executives of 14 significant third sector bodies in Suffolk to discuss the big society and Suffolk county council’s radical new strategic direction programme to contract out local public services. The third sector bodies were extremely keen to bid for these contracts, but they were concerned that unscrupulous, large corporate prime contractors and a very crude payment-by-results regime could fatally damage their cash flow—