Soz SMEs, we're not interested in your direct biz

Evidence

It is very hard to prove one way or another whether the Government is meeting this target. Not too bad for direct spend but a nightmare for figuring out indirect spend. Companies don't exactly have a checkbox in their accounting systems to say a supplier is an SME. While I am ready to believe the Cabinet Office is capable and willing of fudging its figures, saying that SMEs received less in total by 0.1% completely ignores the fact that total government expenditure is meant to have been savagely cut under this Government. Thus SMEs could well be getting an increasing share of a shrinking pie. This article criticises Government claims by cherry-picking the figures to use in that criticism.

Whatever criticisms you can make of the Cabinet Office (and there are many!) it is undoubtedly true that they have been making a concerted effort to improve SME spend by making the whole bidding process easier even if sometimes counter-productively. Right now a lot of European countries are looking at what the UK has done with its SMEs and realising that the UK is streets ahead of them. I can only imagine what it must be like for SMEs in those countries.The grass is not always greener elsewhere.