Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, whether her Department has made an estimate of the annual saving to small and medium-sized enterprises if public bodies accepted Cyber Essentials Plus certification in place of bespoke supplier security questionnaires for contracts below the goods and services threshold in Schedule 1 to the Procurement Act 2023.

Contracting authorities in central government must ensure that effective and proportionate cyber security controls are applied to mitigate supply chain risks. In contracts with certain key characteristics considered to be at a higher risk of cyber security threats, the Cyber Essentials schemes, or equivalent, should be used as set out in Procurement Policy Note 014.

Cyber Essentials is a government backed scheme to help businesses of any size protect themselves against a range of the most common cyber attacks and to demonstrate their commitment to cyber security.