3. 3. Statement: The Programme for Government — ‘Taking Wales Forward’

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:20 pm on 20 September 2016.

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Photo of Carwyn Jones Carwyn Jones Labour 3:20, 20 September 2016

Well, it's still a priority for us, of course. We know how important modern facilities are, and that work is still ongoing in terms of the business case process. In terms of the other issues raised on procurement, I think we covered that quite extensively in First Minister's questions. The key for small businesses, quite often, is to be able to work together with other small businesses to bid for bigger contracts. Agriculture was a real problem in this regard some years ago, but now is a good example of where we looked at the—. I'll give an example: we looked at the supply of beef into the Welsh NHS. Farmers said to me, ‘Well, we don't get any beef in’, and they were right, but the problem was there was no supplier in Wales who could supply the NHS day in, day out, week in, week out, month in, month out. They couldn't do it; they weren't big enough. That was resolved by looking to get suppliers working together to resolve that issue of supply, and the same thing has happened with other small businesses. We've been providing advice as to how they can go about doing that. So, whilst it is true to say that we must make sure we don't have contracts that are so big that it's not even possible for small businesses acting together to bid successfully for them, it's also important to make sure that businesses work together to be big enough in order to bid for contracts that are within their grasp.