Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what assessment he has made of the potential impact of trends in the level of barriers to entry on UK small and medium-sized enterprises in competitive public procurement processes.

The Government is determined to ensure the £400 billion of public money spent on public procurement annually delivers economic growth and supports British businesses, especially SMEs.

The Procurement Act (PA23) sets, for the first time, a duty for contracting authorities to have regard to the particular barriers facing small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and to consider what can be done to reduce or remove them. Initial trends show that the proportion of PA23 tender lots with a planning, tender, transparency or dynamic markets notice tagged as suitable for SMEs has increased to around two thirds of all requirements.

To continue to build on this positive trend, this Government has also published a new, more ambitious, National Procurement Policy Statement (NPPS), which requires contracting authorities to consider ways to increase procurement spend with SMEs and Voluntary, Community, and Social Enterprises (VCSEs).

We have also introduced changes allowing local councils to reserve over one billion pounds worth of lower value contracts to suppliers based locally or within the UK which has recently become law, a step strongly supported by SMEs.

We will set out further reforms, including the response to the recent public procurement consultation, in due course. These reforms will further support British SMEs to bid for contracts.