Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of procurement policy in reducing dependency on high-risk foreign suppliers in critical sectors.

This Government believes that it matters where things are made and who makes them.

The Government has recently published new guidance on using national security exemptions within the Procurement Act 2023 for four initial pathfinder sectors: steel, shipbuilding, artificial intelligence, and energy infrastructure. The four pathfinder sectors were selected based on their status as critical industries where disruptions in international markets have exposed vulnerabilities that threaten national security interests and overall stability.

Separately, the Procurement Act 2023 introduced new powers to exclude a supplier from a specific procurement, terminate a public contract with a supplier, or debar a supplier from all or a range of public contracts, on national security grounds. We are prepared to take robust action to protect the UK from any suppliers in the public sector that may pose a threat to our national security.

Contracting authorities are advised to undertake a detailed national security assessment only where they identify certain sensitivities specified in the new guidance, rather than for every single tender.

The targeted nature of the exclusion and debarment regime means that suppliers will be informed when there is an investigation where there is evidence to suggest that they pose a national security risk. We have not seen evidence to suggest this has impacted negatively on the ability of SMEs to win Government contracts or increased the administrative burden on those businesses.