PARLIAMENTARY WRITTEN QUESTION
Food: Procurement (19 December 2017)

The Government has a manifesto commitment to ensure that a third of goods and services procured by departments are supplied by Small and Medium Enterprises (SME). We are delivering this in respect of food and catering services through the Plan for Public Procurement: Food and Catering Services, published in 2014.

The Plan simplifies the public procurement process and opens up the market to more SMEs and local producers by providing a level playing field on which UK producers can compete. It provides tools, including the Balanced Scorecard (BSC), to help contracting parties to balance a range of criteria beneficial to the consumer, the environment, and to producers. These include embedding UK production standards, encouraging seasonality of fresh produce and calling for menus which celebrate the provenance of the food.

One of the BSC tools, the online market place, was launched on 11 October 2017 and will be used by businesses to showcase their products and services to procurers and to the rest of the supply chain.