Mr. Robert Watt:

We welcome the discussion. When we set out on this programme of reform, we never suggested that we had all the answers or that we had a monopoly on wisdom. When one starts off on a programme like this one, there are unintended consequences and we are very happy to learn from what has gone on. We did not have the advantage of listening to the contributions of two groups the committee had in this morning but I had the advantage of reading their submissions last night and, to an extent, I and Mr. Paul Quinn can reflect on some of those.

We are very much conscious all the time of the need for us to balance the need to save money and the need to support a very important sector in the economy, the small and medium enterprise, SME, sector, which employes many people. The president of the Small Firms Association, SFA, set that out this morning in terms of the contribution that the sector makes to the economy, the number of people employed in it and so on. Our mandate is not around purely accrued value for money. If it comes across like that, I and Mr. Paul Quinn will have to reflect on that, but that is not our agenda. Our mandate, which we were given by the Government, is to drive reform, professionalise this function, save money, provide supports to the SME sector in accessing contracts and to do everything we can to ensure there is a level playing field in terms of the assessing of contracts. For example, we have tried to reduce the administrative burden tenderers face. I was on the other side of the table for eight years in my career responding to public tenders and I am very much aware of the demands, as is Mr. Paul Quinn, and we have put in place steps to try to reduce the burden. There are some crazy onerous requirements on companies to have turnover that is multiples of the value of the contracts, various indemnity insurance requirements and so on. We have set guidance on this now. I accept that issuing guidance and ensuring its implementation takes time. Some public bodies may take longer than we would like for them to fully understand the impact of some of the measures we are proposing.

The office does not purely focus on achieving value for money, rather it is about procuring in a sensible and professional way, which drives economies and efficiencies and provides access to as many players as possible. However, we accept there are occasions when that does not happen in practice and we are happy to learn and happy and to figure out better ways of proceeding.