Oral Answers to Questions

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Thursday 27th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Quin]

The Government are absolutely committed to ensuring that there is always a path into the civil service for people who are high quality; we need really good, high-quality civil servants. That is absolutely our priority. I spoke earlier about apprentices, and my hon. Friend raises an important point regarding fast track. I can assure him we will make certain there are routes into the civil service for the high-quality public servants we all need to deliver high-quality public services.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

16. What steps his Department is taking to help improve the (a) transparency and (b) complexity of public procurement rules for small and medium-sized enterprises.

[The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Jeremy Quin)]

The Procurement Bill will enable simpler, more flexible procurement processes and increased transparency of planned procurements. These changes will make it easier for small and medium-sized enterprises to compete for and indeed win public contracts.

[Mr Hollobone]

When it comes to public procurement, I know that it is administratively easier for the Government to award contracts to bigger companies, as that involves a smaller number of contracts with a smaller number of companies. What happens is that SMEs then become subcontractors of those big national organisations but with reduced margins. It would really help local economies if SMEs could bid directly for Government procurement contracts, because that would raise margins at the local level and be a real boost to the local economy.

[Jeremy Quin]

Not only that: it would increase competition for the contracts, enabling us to have even better delivery of our services on a cost-effective basis. I have good news for my hon. Friend: the most recent stats, for 2020-21, showed that the Government were spending £9 billion indirectly with SMEs and £10 billion directly with SMEs. We are making a lot of progress in opening up procurement, but I assure him that the Procurement Bill will make the pipeline easier and more transparent—there will be one core set of data already in the system—which will enable SMEs to focus on the bid itself. It will also ensure more uniformity across Government regulations and process. That will help SMEs and help level them up.