Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Young of Cookham on 23 January (HL12960), how many spot checks the Public Procurement Review Service will undertake to ensure public bodies are complying with their duty to report late payment performance, and by what date; and how many spot check exercises were previously completed by its predecessor the Mystery Shopper Service.

There were 52 spot checks completed by the Mystery Shopper Service since the introduction of the Public Contracts Regulations 2015. The Public Procurement Review Service has completed 88 checks within this financial year. There is an ongoing programme of spot checks which we target to the trends identified. We report findings from our spot check programme in the Public Procurement Review Service progress report which is produced annually.