Dowie Sarah: Oral Questions — Questions to MinistersText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDowie Sarah: Oral Questions — Questions to Ministers[Sitting date: 25 February 2015. Volume:703;Page:1903. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]8.SARAH DOWIE (National—Invercargill) to the Minister for Small Business: What measures has the Government implemented to support small businesses in accessing the Government procurement process?Hon CRAIG FOSS (Minister for Small Business): Each year the Government spends approximately $39 billion with third-party suppliers accounting for approximately 19 percent of our GDP. This expenditure covers a wide range of goods from services for contracts for prisons to IT systems social services research and of course the rebuild of Canterbury. To ensure that small businesses have the opportunity to bid for and supply Government contracts the Government procurement policy has been structured to ensure that it is open fair and transparent. To assist small businesses further the Government has implemented—[Interruption] listen carefully; you may learn something—the Government Electronic Tenders Service to ensure that businesses can easily find and bid for Government contract opportunities. This new service went live last July. I encourage all small businesses to register and get on the Government Electronic Tenders Service website.Sarah Dowie: What else is being done to help small businesses access all-of-Government contracts? [Interruption]Hon CRAIG FOSS: Grab your pen. A range of other initiatives has been developed to assist small businesses. These include the development of Government Model Contracts for low-value and low-risk procurement to create standardised simple plain English sets of conditions for contracts of common goods and services and a supplier online resource centre has been created to assist small businesses to navigate their tendering process. New Zealand Trade and Enterprise has developed a programme called Better by Procurement which aims to improve tendering proficiency and the strike rate for New Zealand suppliers.Sarah Dowie: What proposals has he seen that could mean small businesses have less time to tender for all-of-Government contracts?Hon CRAIG FOSS: I have seen proposals to introduce additional and complex new tax compliance on small businesses. If small and medium enterprises in New Zealand had to spend extra time working out how to comply with complex new taxes such as a capital gains tax then they would most certainly have less time for businesses and tendering for contracts. Sadly for New Zealand’s small and medium enterprise businesses that is exactly a proposal from—Mr SPEAKER: Order! That will not help the order of this House.Jacinda Ardern: Will he commit to increasing the proportion of procurement undertaken by small business to 20 percent as Labour has committed to do?Hon CRAIG FOSS: I welcome the question from the member. Over 107 Government agencies are part of the procurement policies of this Government. But I do note the policy of the Labour Party that the member mentioned is actually restricted to only Public Service departments the New Zealand Defence Force and the New Zealand Police. So in no way would they get the 20 percent of Government spend on that.Jacinda Ardern: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. The Minister did not answer the question as to whether or not he too—Mr SPEAKER: Order! My difficulty is that I actually had trouble hearing the question because of the level of noise. I am going to invite the member to repeat the question.Jacinda Ardern: Will he commit to increasing the proportion of procurement undertaken by small business to 20 percent as Labour has committed to do?Hon CRAIG FOSS: As part of those commitments that Labour has committed to actually its commitments to achieve that 20 percent—which I checked out earlier—would actually be restricted to only Public Service departments the New Zealand Defence Force and the New Zealand Police. So on that basis I could not commit to such a number.