1. Will the First Minister make a statement on the use of public sector contracts in Wales? OAQ53883

I thank the Member for the question. Innovation in public sector contracts is having a positive effect in Wales. The number of contracts awarded through Sell2Wales to Welsh suppliers in 2018-19 has more than tripled since 2014-15 and now stands at 84 per cent, compared to a baseline of 25 per cent.

I won't ask the question of whether that is in cash terms or by volume, but the question I want to ask is that I believe that if you want to give contracts to smaller local companies, then the size of the contract needs to be small enough for a local firm to tender. If the First Minister agrees with that statement, can he outline what the Welsh Government is doing to ensure contracts are written in such a way that these smaller companies can tender? If he disagrees, can he outline how the Welsh Government are going to ensure that smaller, local companies are able to tender for contracts?

I thank Mike Hedges for that supplementary question. I agree with his first proposition, but, of course, we look to contracts being broken up. That's what the joint bidding guide that the Welsh Government has produced advises large contracts to do, to break up those contracts, and, at the moment, 31 per cent of all contracts advertised on Sell2Wales last year were suitable for joint bids in that way. So, while there are large contracts, I agree with what Mike Hedges said about breaking them up so that they can be small enough for local firms to tender. 

Of course, many public sector contracts, Llywydd, are below the Official Journal of the European Community level in any case, and it's the OJEC level where joint bids are encouraged. We require all contracts worth over £25,000 to be advertised on Sell2Wales. Eighty per cent of all those contracts are below the OJEC level, and those contracts are more attractive to smaller and local firms. Of course, we are keen to support large Welsh firms as well. In the construction sector, 76 per cent of contracts or frameworks of over £0.25 million or more were awarded to Welsh contractors last year. 

Mike Hedges has pretty much asked my supplementary question word for word, so I'm thinking on my feet. But if I can use some personal experience—that's always a good way out of these problems—a few years back, a chief executive officer of a small engineering firm in Chepstow, contacted me and said that he found the Welsh Government procurement form system much easier to fill out than across the border, which was to the Welsh Government's credit, but at the same time he said it was more difficult for smaller firms, at that point in time at least, to procure the work, and they often went to larger firms that were able to put in more competitive bids upfront at the start, which might not necessarily have played out further down. So, he was working in Hereford and procuring there.

I haven't mentioned him by name, but I can get you the correspondence I had with that gentleman at another time. But since I received that correspondence, can you tell us what the Welsh Government has done to make it much easier, in line with Mike Hedges's question, for small firms to access procurement within Wales?

I thank Nick Ramsay for that question. Efforts have been made not simply to make the system easier to use, but to make sure that it is a more effective system so that small Welsh firms, particularly when they work with other firms in a broken down contract, to be able to win work here in Wales. I'd be interested, of course, to see the correspondence to which he referred. But to give the Member a different example of the way that things have changed, we are in the final process of letting a new framework contract for supply teaching here in Wales. We have moved from having one single supplier on that contract to now having more than 20 much smaller contractors, all of them able to compete and offer a service in schools, and the majority of those contracts are let with small Welsh suppliers.