Department for Transport: Productivity

(asked on 24th April 2019) - View Source

Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what assessment his Department has made of the extent to which it is meeting (a) the objectives of the Industrial Strategy and (b) the public procurement criteria in that Strategy to boost UK productivity.


Answered by
Jesse Norman Portrait
Jesse Norman
This question was answered on 1st May 2019

The Department has not yet made a formal assessment in relation to the Industrial Strategy, but believes it is making significant progress. This includes through significant infrastructure investment projects, further investment planning, and the delivery of commitments set out in the Transport Infrastructure Skills Strategy and the Transport Infrastructure Efficiency Strategy.

The Department also provides funding across the country through the Transforming Cities Fund; and it launched the Rebalancing Toolkit in December 2017, to help new investment spread growth across the country.

The Department has led work on the Future of Mobility Grand Challenge, recently published the Future of Mobility: Urban Strategy, and has agreed a sector deal with the rail industry.

On public procurement, the Procuring for Growth Balanced Scorecard has been embedded in the Department's major construction and capital investment projects, and compliance with the Scorecard is regularly assessed and reported to Cabinet Office. In 2016-17 the DfT Group spend with SMEs was 29.9% against an in-year target of 24%, and it expects to have exceeded its target of 26% for 2017-18.

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