Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to ensure that the optometry services provided under contract to their agencies operate in a market in which there are sufficient independent providers to maintain the stimulus of fair commercial competition.

All Government agencies are subject to European regulations covering both competition and awarding public contracts. Additionally, they apply the Government’s principles of transparency in communicating commercial opportunities, which includes actions to stimulate and attract opportunities for small and medium enterprises.

Standard tender documentation for commercial contracts incorporates a pre-qualification questionnaire that requests information from bidders as part of the Government’s policy, to check compliance with company tax laws. The information requested is proportionate with the value of the contract to be awarded.

In line with Government policy all new procurement tenders and contract awards are published via the Government’s central record system known as ‘Contracts Finder’. It would not be possible to quantify prospectively the net tax revenue likely to be generated by each competing bidder.