Chris Ward

As I said earlier, my hon. Friend has raised this with me a number of times, and he is absolutely right to do so. I have spoken with the Department for Transport and security teams about this, and we

We are taking a number of steps to improve SME access to Government procurement, and I outlined those earlier. If it is okay with the hon. Gentleman, I will write to him about the specific measures we

There are four sectors where we are using national security guidance, but the support for SMEs is much broader, too. I will happily talk to my hon. Friend and come back to her on particular parts of h

My hon. Friend is right to raise this issue. She has raised it with me previously, and she is a fantastic champion for her constituents. As she knows, I am working with the National Shipbuilding Offic

This Labour Government believe that it matters where things are made, and who makes them. Last week, I published new guidance to ensure that the full weight of our £400 billion procurement budget prot

The hon. Member is absolutely right that we need to do more to support SMEs, and that we need to use our procurement budget to do that. I have announced some of the steps that we have already taken. I