Government Contracts (SMEs)

Debate between Sammy Wilson and Rob Wilson

Wednesday 28th January 2015 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Civil Society (Mr Rob Wilson)]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for South Antrim (Dr McCrea) for securing this debate on such an important subject. I know that much of his concern is born from the experience of a constituency case, and it is absolutely right that he should speak up for small businesses in his constituency. I join him in congratulating all those wealth creators who take the risk of running their own businesses and, ultimately, pay for the public services that we all enjoy.

From the outset, this Government have fully recognised the vital role that small and medium-sized businesses have to play in helping us to achieve the best possible value for money when we buy goods and services. That was why we included in our initial programme for government an aspiration that by the end of this Parliament 25% of direct and indirect Government procurement of goods and services by value should go to SMEs.

That was a bold step considering that, under the previous Government, Departments had no idea how much they were spending on SMEs. After a lot of hard work, we found that it amounted to 6.5% of Government procurement of goods and services in 2009-10, or £3.1 billion. That was a shamefully low figure, given that 95.5% of private sector businesses in the UK are micro-firms—companies with fewer than 10 employees. However, those micro-businesses together accounted for 32% of private sector employment and 20% of private sector turnover.

We recognised that something had to be done to remove the barriers facing SMEs bidding for Government contracts, and we have gone a long way to removing those barriers. During the past four years, we have increased accessibility and transparency, identified and tackled poor procurement practice and provided practical assistance to help SMEs. We are now taking steps to extend those reforms further across the public sector.

In 2011, to increase accessibility, the Government established the Contracts Finder for central Government. That is a one-stop shop to enable suppliers to find procurement and subcontracting opportunities, tender documents and contracts online and free of charge. The Government have also committed, for the first time, to the publication of future contract opportunities to provide greater transparency about future public sector business, and to help suppliers to plan for and win more business.

Contract pipelines also enable the Government to secure deals that offer better value for the taxpayer by allowing for early negotiation with suppliers. The contract pipelines have developed from £40 billion of future spend in 2011 to more than £191 billion on 19 pipelines by December 2014. This information provides a view of major contracting opportunities through to 2020 and beyond, and it includes projected spend on High Speed 2 and the Thames tunnel, to give just two examples.

We have also appointed Stephen Allott as Crown representative for SMEs to be a

“strong voice at the top table”

for SMEs. He works across Government, and with SMEs and their trade associations, to get full value from SMEs and to increase the number of SMEs bidding for and winning Government contracts. We also set up the Cabinet Office SME panel to provide a regular forum for SMEs to raise the issues that concern them most and to hold our feet, as a Government, to the fire.

[Sammy Wilson]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Rob Wilson]

I will continue for a little bit longer, if I may, because I have to get through a lot of questions to which I know the hon. Gentleman and others want answers.

To identify poor procurement practice, we have introduced a mystery shopper service. If a supplier encounters poor practice, such as an over-bureaucratic pre-qualification requirement or unreasonable selection criteria, they can blow the whistle and refer that to our mystery shopper service, which will raise it on their behalf with the contracting authority. We regularly publish the outcomes of mystery shopper investigations on the gov.uk website. We have now received nearly 800 mystery shopper cases, with four out of five investigations resulting in a positive outcome.

In addition, the mystery shopper service has started proactively spot checking procurements by examining procurement documents online. We have instigated nearly 500 spot checks to look at a range of aspects of procurement, and have found issues in around 20% of the checks that we have conducted, including burdensome pre-qualification questionnaires.

Some 45 of those spot checks tested compliance with the Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012 and involved asking contracting authorities to set out how they considered the requirements of the Act in the pre-procurement stage of service contracts. The sort of evidence that we look for includes whether any consultation took place with the market, and with current and potential service users, and how the conclusions drawn from such consultation were used to shape the requirement. In total, 20% of the authorities examined were unable to provide sufficient evidence of compliance, so we have advised them to ensure they consider the Act in future.

We are particularly conscious of the burden of pre-qualification questionnaires, which are used to select suppliers to be invited to tender, and the pressure that they can place on SMEs. To address that situation, we have eliminated the use of PQQs in 15 out of 17 Departments for all central Government procurement under the EU threshold of approximately £100,000. The two Departments still using PQQs—the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Ministry of Defence—are doing so only for security reasons. For those procurements that still require a PQQ, we have introduced a much simpler standard set of questions, which reduces the burden on suppliers and levels the playing field in terms of financial risk and evidence of experience.

We recognise that being paid promptly is vital to enable SMEs to manage their cash flows and to reduce the amount of time wasted on chasing invoices. We are determined to help businesses to manage their cash flows and to transform the culture of late payment. In 2010, to respond to the point made by the hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy), the Government reiterated our policy of paying 80% of undisputed invoices within five days and ensuring that the prime contractors pay tier 2 suppliers within 30 days as a condition of contracting with Departments. We expect our suppliers to follow our example on prompt payment and to pay their subcontractors within the 30-day limit. When this does not happen, we encourage suppliers to report late payment to the mystery shopper service.

We know that we need to do more to improve performance across the public sector, however. We have made much progress in the past four years, but following recommendations by Lord Young of Graffham, we now intend to extend these reforms across the public sector to non-devolved bodies such as the NHS and local councils in England.

We intend to introduce measures in the next few weeks to ensure that 30-day payment terms flow down the public sector supply chains into all new contracts, which will ensure that smaller suppliers benefit from prompt payment. Contracts Finder will be extended to become a one-stop shop for public sector contract opportunities. We have fully redeveloped the original site to make it more user-friendly, including by creating a powerful search facility to make it easier to find and bid for work, and providing the ability to look up contracts by location and postcode. The site will function on multiple devices.

I am conscious of the time, but I want to cover as many of the questions that were asked as possible. We heard about EU procurement rules being unwieldy, and we have negotiated a new procurement directive that will improve the chances of SMEs winning public contracts. Regulations to transpose that directive will be introduced very soon.

As for the EU procurement requirement, as part of this year’s new public contract legislation, there will be more open approaches for supplier procurement and a reaching out to more suppliers, including SMEs. The documentation required from SMEs is being reduced to make it easier for them to access opportunities. The UK engaged proactively in negotiations on a new directive on SMEs and EU markets.

I was asked about aggregating demand with regard to helping SMEs. Breaking large contracts into more manageable lots is key to ensuring that SMEs can compete for aggregated deals, and the new procurement regulations will require contracting authorities actively to consider that. The new public contracts regulations will apply across the whole public sector, apart from devolved bodies, and will include Lord Young’s recommendation to abolish PQQs. Under Lord Young’s reforms, we are requiring the public sector generally to advertise contracts on Contracts Finder. This includes an option to highlight any opportunity as applying to an SME.

The hon. Member for South Antrim talked about an individual company. The Highways Agency fully supports the use of Conemaster on its road networks. It has funded its use in road trials, as well as an analysis of its economic performance, which showed that Conemaster demonstrated a positive benefit-cost ratio of 2:1.

I think that is about as far as I will get on answering hon. Members’ questions, but I would like to say finally that we—