Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the guidance entitled, Procurement policy note 03/14: promoting tax compliance, how many suppliers have been excluded from bidding for contracts as a result of not meeting the criteria in that document in each year since 2014.

Procurement rules require the Department to exclude any supplier for non-payment of taxes if the breach is established by a court ruling. Information is not collated centrally on companies excluded from bidding for the Department as a result of prosecutions or convictions in relation to the payment of taxes. Officials are not aware of any such cases.

Cabinet Office’s Procurement Policy Note 03/14, published in 2014, set out questions that central government departments should use for the Pre-Qualification Questionnaire (PQQ) phase of procurement exercises likely to be £5 million or more in value. These are used to gather information on and make assessments of prospective bidders' suitability, before considering tenders; Note 03/14 introduced questions to gather information about companies' track records including declarations around payment of taxes.

These questions now form part of the Standard Selection Questionnaire (SQ), the successor to the PQQ, introduced by the Cabinet Office and Crown Commercial Service in 2017 under Procurement Policy Note 8/16.