Asked by: Callum Anderson (Labour - Buckingham and Bletchley)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what assessment she has made of the capacity of small and medium-sized enterprises in Buckingham and Bletchley constituency to meet the new procurement requirements.
Answered by Mark Ferguson - Parliamentary Secretary (Cabinet Office)
The Government is committed to supporting small and medium-sized enterprises across the country, including in Buckingham and Bletchley. The new measures provide a clearer, simplified approach that will make it easier for businesses of all sizes to bid for government contracts.
Asked by: Callum Anderson (Labour - Buckingham and Bletchley)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what assessment she has made of the potential impact of the new procurement requirements on competition for public contracts.
Answered by Mark Ferguson - Parliamentary Secretary (Cabinet Office)
Simplifying the social value requirements in central government procurement will simplify the procurement process and make it easier for businesses of all sizes to bid for government contracts.
Asked by: Callum Anderson (Labour - Buckingham and Bletchley)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what steps her Department is taking to increase AI capability across the Civil Service.
Answered by Mark Ferguson - Parliamentary Secretary (Cabinet Office)
The Government is committed to building AI capability across the Civil Service to deliver better, more efficient public services. We are driving this through targeted training, skills development, and specialist recruitment.
Training: Following the "One Big Thing 2025" campaign where a record 221,000 civil servants took part in foundational AI training, we are launching "One Big Thing 2026: AI in Action" this autumn to equip every civil servant with practical AI skills and boost productivity by driving adoption of AI across the Civil Service.
Skills: The new National School of Government and Public Services, launching this year and scaling over three years, will provide a dedicated curriculum covering AI, data, and digital capability.
Recruitment: To attract top technical talent, 36 organisations have adopted the Government Digital, Data and Cyber Pay Framework. This supports our commitment to double the tech workforce from 5% to 10% of the Civil Service by 2030, reinforced by an expanded Digital Fast Stream featuring new Data Scientist and Software Engineer pathways.
Asked by: Callum Anderson (Labour - Buckingham and Bletchley)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what assessment she has made of barriers to AI adoption across government departments.
Answered by Mark Ferguson - Parliamentary Secretary (Cabinet Office)
The Government continually assesses barriers to AI adoption to ensure we unlock significant productivity gains and modernise public services. As identified by the State of Digital Government review, there are several notable barriers: a national skills shortage, outdated legacy computer systems, and a risk-averse administrative culture.
We are tackling the skills gap by launching the National School of Government and Public Services to upskill our existing workforce. To fix legacy infrastructure, our Shared Services Strategy is replacing 286 vulnerable, outdated computer systems with modern, cloud-based platforms. To combat risk-aversion, "Project RESET" is stripping back bureaucratic spending controls so departments can procure and test new digital tools faster and more effectively.
Asked by: Callum Anderson (Labour - Buckingham and Bletchley)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what steps her Department plans to take to ensure consistency in the application of the new procurement requirements across contracting authorities.
Answered by Mark Ferguson - Parliamentary Secretary (Cabinet Office)
The Cabinet Office will publish detailed guidance on the application of social value criteria in central government procurement in the autumn. This will include standard reporting metrics.
Asked by: Callum Anderson (Labour - Buckingham and Bletchley)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what metrics her Department will use to evaluate the success of the new procurement requirements for British jobs.
Answered by Mark Ferguson - Parliamentary Secretary (Cabinet Office)
The Cabinet Office will publish detailed guidance on the application of social value criteria in central government procurement in the autumn. This will include standard reporting metrics.
Asked by: Callum Anderson (Labour - Buckingham and Bletchley)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what metrics will be used to assess the success of the AI Taskforce.
Answered by Kanishka Narayan - Minister of State (Cabinet Office) (Jointly with the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Technology)
The remit of the Taskforce will be to transform public services and unlock growth and prosperity across the country. The Taskforce will report to the Cabinet Secretary and the AI Minister, and Lord Vallance as Chair will report directly to the Prime Minister. These are the right individuals to assess the success of the Taskforce and hold it to account.
Asked by: Callum Anderson (Labour - Buckingham and Bletchley)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what priorities have been set for the AI Taskforce.
Answered by Kanishka Narayan - Minister of State (Cabinet Office) (Jointly with the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Technology)
The PM’s AI Taskforce will drive the Government's overall strategy on AI. The remit of the Taskforce will be to transform public services and unlock growth and prosperity across the country. The Taskforce's fundamental purpose will be the direction and implementation of the government's strategy on AI.
Asked by: Callum Anderson (Labour - Buckingham and Bletchley)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what governance arrangements are in place to oversee cross-government AI implementation.
Answered by Kanishka Narayan - Minister of State (Cabinet Office) (Jointly with the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Technology)
The Taskforce will be based in the Office for the Prime Minister and the Cabinet (OPMC), where it will sit alongside No.10, No.10 North and core Cabinet Office functions. This location makes the Taskforce well situated to drive the direction and implementation of the overall government's strategy on AI.
Asked by: Callum Anderson (Labour - Buckingham and Bletchley)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, whether his Department plans to issue updated guidance to contracting authorities on the assessment of national security risks in procurement decisions.
Answered by Chris Ward
This Government believes that it matters where things are made and who makes them.
The Government has recently published new guidance on using national security exemptions within the Procurement Act 2023 for four initial pathfinder sectors: steel, shipbuilding, artificial intelligence, and energy infrastructure. The four pathfinder sectors were selected based on their status as critical industries where disruptions in international markets have exposed vulnerabilities that threaten national security interests and overall stability.
Separately, the Procurement Act 2023 introduced new powers to exclude a supplier from a specific procurement, terminate a public contract with a supplier, or debar a supplier from all or a range of public contracts, on national security grounds. We are prepared to take robust action to protect the UK from any suppliers in the public sector that may pose a threat to our national security.
Contracting authorities are advised to undertake a detailed national security assessment only where they identify certain sensitivities specified in the new guidance, rather than for every single tender.
The targeted nature of the exclusion and debarment regime means that suppliers will be informed when there is an investigation where there is evidence to suggest that they pose a national security risk. We have not seen evidence to suggest this has impacted negatively on the ability of SMEs to win Government contracts or increased the administrative burden on those businesses.