The Scottish Government values the role of supported businesses and is committed to helping them to achieve commercial sustainability. In Scotland, we pride ourselves on leading in that area with legislation and systems that support that. Legislation such as the Procurement Reform (Scotland) Act 2014 contains a number of provisions to support supported businesses. The multi-supplier dynamic purchasing system for requirements reserved for supported businesses describes a range of products and services that supported businesses can provide to the public sector.

Recent data shows that almost £28 million of public sector spend was spent by public bodies with supported businesses in the previous year. Supported businesses are also included in the recently published social enterprise action plan. We are now working with officials to provide further guidance to public bodies and to set guidelines on how much they should seek to spend with supported businesses across the country.