[Falkirk, 06.08.2026] Falkirk MP and Co-Chair of the British Buses All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG), Euan Stainbank, has welcomed new UK Government procurement rules designed to ensure that public spending supports British jobs, skills and apprenticeships.
The reforms will narrow the criteria used to assess the social value offered by companies bidding for government contracts. The assessment will focus more clearly on creating high-quality jobs, addressing local skills shortages and supporting young people into apprenticeships and work placements.
For central government contracts worth £5 million or more, the weighting given to these benefits will double from 10% to 20%.
The changes will apply to central government procurements from 1 January 2027. The market for government contracts is worth approximately £90 billion each year. Requirements will also be simplified, making it easier for smaller businesses and civil society organisations to compete for public contracts.
Mr Stainbank has repeatedly called for public procurement to do more to support domestic manufacturing. His campaigning has included challenging the Scottish Government’s decision to award most of its £45 million ScotZEB3 funding to operators seeking to purchase buses manufactured overseas while rejecting bids to purchase buses from Falkirk-based Alexander Dennis. This decision put 115 jobs directly at risk earlier this year.
Mr Stainbank said:
“Public money should work twice as hard for us: delivering the goods and services we need while supporting good jobs, skills and opportunities here at home.
“Since I was elected, I have challenged public funding decisions that send work and investment overseas when that money could support skilled employment and manufacturing in communities such as Falkirk.
“The UK Government is right to narrow the social value criteria so that they focus clearly on jobs, skills, apprenticeships and work placements. Increasing the weighting from 10% to 20% for contracts worth £5 million or more gives these commitments genuine importance when bids are assessed.
“This matters enormously to businesses across the country. We have a highly skilled manufacturing workforce and businesses capable of delivering major public contracts, but too often they have been undercut by processes that fail to recognise the wider value of supporting British jobs and industrial capacity. Instead, social value criteria have become bogged down in tokenistic tree-planting exercises and patronising community grants offered by companies receiving public money while undermining our industrial capacity.
“I will press the Government to look again at the agreement reached with mayoral combined authorities earlier this year, which set a baseline of 10%, and raise it to meet, at minimum, the Government’s ambitious new 20% standard.
“Every pound of taxpayers’ money should deliver the greatest possible benefit for the people and places we serve”.
ENDS
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