4. Will the Minister make a statement on the Welsh Government's public sector procurement policy? OQ57351

Following consultation, the Wales procurement policy statement was updated and published in March 2021, setting out high-level principles to support the delivery of our economic, social, environmental and cultural well-being goals through procurement. On 25 November, we published an action plan setting out how we will observe the statement.

I'm grateful to you, Minister, for that response. Two weeks ago, during a Welsh Conservative debate on small businesses, I encouraged the economy Minister to look at ways to strengthen our procurement practices to help small local businesses bid for public sector contracts. You'll be aware of the research that shows that for every £1 a small business receives, 63p is reinvested in the local economy, compared to 40p for larger firms. That's why it's crucial that the procurement system is as accessible as possible to small businesses and that they have every opportunity to win contracts in the first place. What discussions have you had with your colleague the economy Minister on this issue? And in light of the social partnership and public procurement Wales Bill, how will you ensure that small businesses are able to fairly compete for contracts in the future?

This is something of particular interest in ensuring that the money we spend through procurement in Wales has that social value, which is partly achieved through supporting the foundational economy and supporting small and medium-sized enterprises here in Wales. We have, over the course of this year, published a number of Wales procurement policy notes, which are there to support the procurement process. One in particular was regarding small and medium-sized enterprises and how to undertake SME-friendly procurement. That highlights and builds on the principles within the 'Opening Doors' charter for SME-friendly procurement, and it provided organisations with updated information and additional resources to support SMEs. It also reiterates the commitments and principles agreed between the Welsh public sector and SMEs to set a minimum level of good practice and encourage SME-friendly procurement.

The second WPPN that I would highlight would be the guidance on reserving below-threshold procurements for Welsh public sector contracting authorities, which was published, again, this year. That encourages in-scope organisations to streamline and to simplify procurement in relation to contract spend on goods, services and works contracts with a value below the applicable thresholds. And again, that's there to try and ensure that small businesses in particular are able to compete for those contracts. But where there's more to do in this area, obviously we'd be keen to do so. I think that this is also going to be an important part of the work we're doing to identify and map out supply chain voids that we have here in Wales. Where we do find voids, if we can find small businesses that we're able to grow or adapt to meet those voids and become successful, then we'd want to do that.

Gweinidog, I was very pleased to see, as part of the co-operation agreement between Plaid Cymru and the Welsh Government, that you will explore how to set meaningful targets to increase public sector procurement from the current 52 per cent. As Paul Davies has highlighted, there are huge economic benefits for local businesses to have this public sector procurement because of the huge contribution they make to their local area. Last month, the Prif Weinidog praised Carmarthenshire council's challenge fund project. He mentioned that all the milk used in schools in Carmarthenshire is Welsh milk, but incredibly, some of that milk has to be taken not just outside Carmarthenshire county, but outside the country, outside of Wales, in order to be processed and bottled, and that the local authority in Carmarthenshire is committed to doing some work to see whether processing capacity, co-operatively based, could be recreated in the county. How can we make sure that this type of best practice on procurement can flow across the whole of Wales, including in my region, so more local products and services can be purchased and promoted in Cardiff, the Vale of Glamorgan and Rhondda Cynon Taf? Diolch yn fawr.

Diolch. I'm really pleased that this is an area that is within the co-operation agreement, exploring how we can keep this value here in Wales. I think it really does build on some good work that was undertaken over the summer, which was a discovery exercise creating a digital road map for e-procurement. It means that we will be looking at much more transparency throughout the supply chain, so that we do understand those issues that Rhys ab Owen has just described in terms of milk being removed from the country to be processed, only to be returned for the children in schools. That's a really good example of the kind of void that I was talking about earlier, but more so in the area of processing capacity. I know this is an area of particular interest for my colleague the Minister for rural affairs, and, of course, she's looked over many years to support the increase of processing capacity here in Wales. But I'll certainly look at what Carmarthenshire council are trying to achieve and what we can learn from that.

Spreading best practice will be really important in the work that we're doing to increase the capacity and the capability of the procurement profession here in Wales. We've invested in supporting people through graduate qualifications and so on, in the hope that they will stay in the Welsh public sector and become procurement professionals who are working in a different way. It's not all about the bottom line anymore, and understanding things is much more about what social value, economic value and cultural value you can get from your spend, rather than just what's the cheapest thing that you can possibly buy. So, I think we are in a really exciting place with procurement, and if we can look at good examples, such as that described in Carmarthenshire, then I'm very, very, keen to do so.