Asked by: Seema Malhotra (Labour (Co-op) - Feltham and Heston)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, how many contracts have been placed with SMEs through Contracts Finder in each year since its launch in 2011.
Answered by Alex Burghart - Parliamentary Secretary (Cabinet Office)
Contracts Finder originally went live in 2011 as a Business Link service. It was replatformed as a GOV.UK service in 2015. Data from 2011 - 2014 has been archived and cannot be interrogated to answer these questions.
Contracts Awarded to SMEs:
| Total awards | Awarded to SMEs | % awarded to SMEs |
2015 | 12,414 | 298 | 2.40% |
2016 | 18,747 | 1,828 | 9.75% |
2017 | 24,237 | 3,922 | 16.18% |
2018 | 29,187 | 9,290 | 31.83% |
2019 | 33,217 | 11,510 | 34.65% |
2020 | 31,398 | 11,980 | 38.16% |
2021 | 48,292 | 17,752 | 36.76% |
2022 | 53,851 | 20,899 | 38.81% |
Registered businesses:
| All Business | SME | % |
2015 | 14,604 | 2,767 | 18.9% |
2016 | 1,068 | 484 | 45.3% |
2017 | 10,194 | 4,722 | 46.3% |
2018 | 8,682 | 3,827 | 44.1% |
2019 | 7,704 | 3,313 | 43% |
2020 | 9,559 | 3,599 | 37.7% |
2021 | 9,084 | 2,687 | 29.6% |
2022 | 7,851 | 2,067 | 26.3% |
The Procurement Bill, currently passing through Parliament, will create a simpler and more transparent procurement regime that will further open up public procurement to SMEs. The Bill includes a new duty on contracting authorities to have regard to the particular barriers facing SMEs.
Asked by: Seema Malhotra (Labour (Co-op) - Feltham and Heston)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, how many unique users there have been of the Find a Tender service in each year since its founding.
Answered by Jeremy Quin
The data for the Contracts Finder service and the Find a Tender Service is listed below.
Contracts Finder unique users by year, based on cookies which store user information and preferences between website visits. Starting in 2020, users were able to opt out of cookies, meaning that it became a much less reliable indicator of uniques users - and led to a drop in the reported number of unique users recorded using this methodology.
Contracts Finder service unique users by year:
2017 - 650,003
2018 - 656,661
2019 - 780,951
2020 - 533,809 - users begin to be able to opt out of cookies
2021 - 187,905
2022 - 169,530
Find a Tender Service unique users by year:
2021 - 90,503
2022 - 81,515
No assessment of business awareness is available. And, although user research is continually conducted with public and private sector users of both Contracts Finder and Find a Tender, no specific data is available with regards to user satisfaction. The ongoing user research is used to identify areas of improvement for both systems to meet ongoing user needs.
Asked by: Seema Malhotra (Labour (Co-op) - Feltham and Heston)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, how many unique users there have been of the Contracts Finder service in each year since its founding.
Answered by Jeremy Quin
The data for the Contracts Finder service and the Find a Tender Service is listed below.
Contracts Finder unique users by year, based on cookies which store user information and preferences between website visits. Starting in 2020, users were able to opt out of cookies, meaning that it became a much less reliable indicator of uniques users - and led to a drop in the reported number of unique users recorded using this methodology.
Contracts Finder service unique users by year:
2017 - 650,003
2018 - 656,661
2019 - 780,951
2020 - 533,809 - users begin to be able to opt out of cookies
2021 - 187,905
2022 - 169,530
Find a Tender Service unique users by year:
2021 - 90,503
2022 - 81,515
No assessment of business awareness is available. And, although user research is continually conducted with public and private sector users of both Contracts Finder and Find a Tender, no specific data is available with regards to user satisfaction. The ongoing user research is used to identify areas of improvement for both systems to meet ongoing user needs.
Asked by: Seema Malhotra (Labour (Co-op) - Feltham and Heston)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what assessment he has made of business (a) awareness of and (b) satisfaction with the Contracts Finder and Find a Tender services.
Answered by Jeremy Quin
The data for the Contracts Finder service and the Find a Tender Service is listed below.
Contracts Finder unique users by year, based on cookies which store user information and preferences between website visits. Starting in 2020, users were able to opt out of cookies, meaning that it became a much less reliable indicator of uniques users - and led to a drop in the reported number of unique users recorded using this methodology.
Contracts Finder service unique users by year:
2017 - 650,003
2018 - 656,661
2019 - 780,951
2020 - 533,809 - users begin to be able to opt out of cookies
2021 - 187,905
2022 - 169,530
Find a Tender Service unique users by year:
2021 - 90,503
2022 - 81,515
No assessment of business awareness is available. And, although user research is continually conducted with public and private sector users of both Contracts Finder and Find a Tender, no specific data is available with regards to user satisfaction. The ongoing user research is used to identify areas of improvement for both systems to meet ongoing user needs.
Asked by: Seema Malhotra (Labour (Co-op) - Feltham and Heston)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, how many young people aged eighteen or younger have undertaken work experience in his Department in the last 12 months; and what proportion of those young people were (a) girls and (b) boys from state schools.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
There have been no people aged eighteen or younger over the past twelve months who have undertaken work experience in the Cabinet Office.
Asked by: Seema Malhotra (Labour (Co-op) - Feltham and Heston)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what recent progress the Supply Chain Advisory Group and Industry Taskforce has made on its work.
Answered by Michael Ellis
The resilience of UK supply chains remains a key priority for the Government. Following Sir Dave Lewis' final recommendations at the end of last year, work has focused on ensuring that Government:
continues to build and embed departmental capability and collaboration on supply chains policy,
builds stronger capability to horizon scan, spot risks early, and collate and utilise data to understand supply chains issues, and works with industry to resolve them, and
considers how best to optimise existing infrastructure capacity and improve cross-modal connectivity.
Asked by: Seema Malhotra (Labour (Co-op) - Feltham and Heston)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and the Minister for Cabinet Office, what recent estimate he has made of the number of 18 to 24 year olds (a) in part time employment, (b) in contracted work and (c) unemployed.
Answered by Michael Ellis
The information requested falls under the remit of the UK Statistics Authority. I have, therefore, asked the Authority to respond.
Asked by: Seema Malhotra (Labour (Co-op) - Feltham and Heston)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office, what estimate his Department has made of the number of business deaths that have occurred during the last three recorded quarters.
Answered by Michael Ellis
The information requested falls under the remit of the UK Statistics Authority. I have, therefore, asked the Authority to respond.