Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Finance and Local Government – in the Senedd at 2:03 pm on 15 December 2021.
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.