Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude has urged SMEs to place pressure on the government and demand increased transparency and accountability from the public sector procurement process.

The move to increase the government’s procurement transparency would increase completion and help SMEs in bidding for contracts.

Increased accountability and openness would also restrict the dominance of enterprise level companies over public sector contracts, while encouraging the use of SMEs to deliver specialist services.

Mr Maude said during an Open Government Partnership summit, that: “One is the small business arena, who get frozen out of a lot of government contracting. It’s just too difficult. They should be being very demanding.”

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