Whether you’re following every twist of the knife and turn of fortunes, or were bored before it started, for better or worse, the result of the Conservative Party’s leadership election will impact the entrepreneurial landscape of the UK.
There are clear differences on policy emerging between the candidates. As Sam Dumitriu explains in his latest Substack, on tax it’s a pretty stark choice between Rishi Sunak and the other candidates. And while it may not be obvious from listening to their televised pitches, Public First’s Conservative Leadership Election Policy Tracker shows battle lines are being drawn on some of the other big issues.
Similarly, Taso Advisory is tracking the candidates’ tech policy positions, with differences emerging on the Online Safety Bill. And FT Sifted has had a stab (somewhat in the dark) at ranking the candidates based on who they think would be best for startups: Sunak 9/10, Truss 8/10, Badenoch 8/10, Tugendhat 5/10, Mordaunt 4/10 (other rankings are available).
These disagreements will only get more stark in the TV debates: 7.30pm this evening on Channel 4, 7pm Sunday on ITV, and 8pm Tuesday on Sky News. And while only Conservative Party Members (0.3% of the total UK electorate) will decide the next leader, there is no escaping the consequences of their decision.
Procure Meant
While I’ve been quite critical of the capability of the outgoing government to get things done, one area where entrepreneurs will start to see progress is in public procurement. Somewhat below the radar, in his role as Minister for Government Efficiency Jacob Rees-Mogg has been driving this agenda.
We’ve been making noises behind the scenes, and this week partnered with Enterprise Nation on a report as part of our ongoing Access all Areas project. Using fresh figures from government tenders and data provider Tussell, Access all Areas: Government reveals that despite the policy ambition to increase spending with SMEs to 25%, over the past five years the government had managed to spend just 10% of its total procurement budget directly with small businesses.
Procurement in the UK accounts for a third of all government spending, and over a 10th of all spending in the economy, but many small businesses are locked out of tendering. This is bad for competition and bad for innovation. As Aria Babu argues, the system is unnecessarily bureaucratic, which is easier for larger firms to cope with as small businesses don’t have dedicated staff time and resources to searching for procurement opportunities and fill out arduously long tenders.
Here are the key recommendations, which were wholeheartedly backed by Jacob Rees-Mogg MP at the launch:
– Publish pipelines early: Public bodies should post a pipeline of contracts that are likely to come up. For example, the government knows that if it has cleaning services for their buildings and has negotiated a two-year contract, it will want some form of cleaning services again in two years' time.
– Improve pre-procurement consortium building: Provide a platform which can allow businesses to connect with each other so that they can decide to submit bids together and/or with large tier one suppliers.
– Establish a pro-innovation culture: Look for indicators other than history of procurement to deduce ability to deliver on scale. This could include things such as some staff have worked on large projects or if the company has managed to scale quickly.
– Write bids in a way that allows for more innovative solutions: Procurement teams should avoid writing tenders in a too narrow format. Instead of procuring for "a local library" they should instead consider writing a tender for a way of giving local people access to a broad catalogue of books" and see what solutions firms offer to their problems.
– Decrease bureaucracy: Dynamic procurement allows companies to submit information about their company once, which then makes them eligible for all contracts of a certain type. On this, we welcome news of the single sign-on referenced in the Procurement Bill now going through parliament.
– Stick with one method of publishing SME spending: Government should establish one method of measuring the proportion of procurement budgets going towards SMEs and stick with it.
I’ll leave the final words for Emma Jones CBE, founder of Enterprise Nation and a former SME Crown Representative:
"The government has done a great job of encouraging the growth of the UK's start-up and small business ecosystem. The next logical step is to play a role in their growth, by ensuring they are buying from them, either directly, via consortiums or through larger businesses that make a point of working in partnership with small firms.
"Working with government can be life-changing for smaller businesses. It can provide them with opportunities and experiences and can lead to sustainable and significant scale.
"We're not suggesting a 'bonfire of the red tape', but this report shows a significant reduction in bureaucracy could help to turn the dial on small business growth."
For further reading, please check out our earlier Procurement and Innovation report.
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