West Worcestershire MP Harriett Baldwin has repeated a Government pledge to increase the amount of spending allocated to small businesses. The MP met with a group of local defence firms to identify ways of putting more Government spending in the hands of small and medium sized businesses. There is a large cluster of Worcestershire businesses trading with the Ministry of Defence and Harriett led a roundtable discussion with some of them to examine how to make it easier for more companies to sell their services and products. As well as being a Worcestershire MP, Harriett is also Defence Minister in charge of procurement and she pledged to take feedback to her Department to try and improve the amount of spending directed to small and medium sized businesses. Harriett commented: “The Government has set out an aim to have 25 per cent of its spending directed to small and medium sized businesses and it was really helpful to get a small group of local entrepreneurs to discuss the wider issues of trading with my Department. “We have taken some important steps to helping smaller businesses including reducing red tape, making forms simpler and setting up a network of supply chain advocates to assist any company which wants to sell in to Government. “We have a very constructive and frank chat and I will take these comments back to my Department and hope that we will be able to feed some of the suggestions into a continually improving procurement process.” Photo: Worcestershire small businesses meet with Harriett Baldwin MP to discuss procurement.