Oral Answers to Questions

Stephen Metcalfe Excerpts

Thursday 11th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

The hon. Lady raises two important questions. The first is with respect to schools. The Minister for School Standards, my right hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Nick Gibb), will be writing to local authorities and schools today, alongside Ministers in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, to outline how schools can be used in a safe and appropriate way, but we are also making funding available to local authorities so that alternative venues other than schools can be used where appropriate.

The hon. Lady’s second point, relating to unfairness as a result of different restrictions perhaps occurring in different local government areas, is an important one, and one that we are taking into account as we plan for these local elections.

[Stephen Metcalfe (South Basildon and East Thurrock) (Con)]

What steps the Government are taking to increase opportunities for small businesses to bid for Government contracts.

[Miriam Cates (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Con)]

What steps the Government are taking to increase opportunities for small businesses to bid for Government contracts.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Julia Lopez)]

The UK spends £290 billion on public procurement each year. Now that we have left the EU transition period, we aim to make it simpler, quicker and cheaper for small and medium-sized enterprises and social enterprises to bid for Government contracts, as set out in our ambitious procurement Green Paper. We have already introduced a policy that will allow below-threshold contracts to be reserved for smaller UK suppliers, and we hope our new approach to social value will secure wider public benefit by allowing us to contract with firms that deliver more apprenticeships, local growth opportunities and environmental benefits.

[Stephen Metcalfe [V]]

I know that my hon. Friend will agree that our small and medium-sized businesses are the bedrock of our economy. I am sure that she will also agree that giving them the opportunity to bid for Government contracts will give them a significant boost and help them recover from what has been a very tough year. Will she lay out exactly how the Government will be promoting this opportunity to SMEs, so that businesses in Basildon and Thurrock can start to bid immediately?

[Julia Lopez]

I agree with my hon. Friend that the opportunities in this space are huge, and we think that our reforms will play a huge role in our post-covid recovery. For too long, complex and opaque procurement rules have benefited bigger and less innovative firms. Our reforms will simplify the current framework of over 350 regulations into one uniform set of rules, and move from seven procurement procedures to three. Our free-to-use digital platform, Contracts Finder, should make it easier for businesses in his constituency to find relevant opportunities. We want to make supply registration far simpler, so that data has to be submitted only once to qualify for any public sector procurement.