The government’s new Procurement Bill will focus on helping small and medium sized businesses (SMEs) compete for government contracts, as 350 EU laws will be replaced with a simple and more flexible system, and will level the playing field for SMEs and help to drive economic growth across the country.
Reforms planned will slash costs and help ease the bidding proves for businesses, especially smaller companies with less experience of the process of procurement, which will result in more SMEs benefitting from contracts in all sectors.
Steve Barclay, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, said:
“We are introducing reforms through our Procurement Bill that will do away with bureaucratic rules that are both complicated and time-consuming for firms to navigate.
Our departure from the European Union means we are free to streamline these rules on who wins taxpayer contracts.
This will give small businesses a better chance of landing public sector contracts and allow the Government wider access to the first-class skills, innovation, and ideas that many agile, creative smaller firms offer. In turn this will allow us to improve the services we provide to the public.”
New digital infrastructure will make it easier and cheaper for organisations of all sizes to bid for public contracts, using a single platform that will hold all a suppliers credentials, whilst being part of a single framework with simple and flexible rules, as opposed to the hundreds of complicated and bureaucratic rules that the EU implemented.
CBI Deputy Director for Policy, Liz Crowhurst, said:
“Businesses are excited to seize the opportunities presented by this once-in-a-generation Procurement Bill.
From the streamlining of complex procurement processes, to the new digital supplier registration system that will slash the administrative burden facing suppliers, the Bill sets out proposals to cut red-tape, promote transparency, and encourage great public-private collaborations.”
The new regulations will make working with government easier and more attractive to businesses of all sizes, and industry stands ready to help translate the benefits from paper into practice.”
These new reforms are aiming to accelerate government spending with SMEs, which have increased for the fourth consecutive year to a record £19.3 billion in 2020/2021
The Bill is set to come into action next year and has moved a step closer to becoming law, after being debated in the House of Lords last week.
