00:00
Sarah Stone
Hello, and welcome to let's Talk Social Value, the podcast where we get to pick the brains of amazing experts and professionals operating in the field of social value. I'm Sarah Stone, your host, and today I am delighted to be joined by Lindsay Maguire, who is Deputy Director for Procurement Reform at the Cabinet Office. And thank you very much for joining us. It's a real treat to have you on here.

00:31
Lindsay Maguire
Thank you so much for the invite. It's an absolute pleasure and a really important topic.
00:35
Sarah Stone
I've got lots of questions. I can't wait. Can I start by asking you, what does the Deputy Director for Procurement Reform at the Cabinet Office do? And how does social value fit into your role?
00:45
Lindsay Maguire
My role sits within the Government commercial function, which is part of the Cabinet Office. So the UK spends a lot of money, about £300 billion a year. And centrally within the Cabinet Office, we're responsible for setting priorities, setting out policy, looking at things like capability, looking at capacity across the piece and just making sure that commercial is delivering for citizens of the uk. So we've got a team within Cabinet Office, in our central teams and specifically on procurement form. One of the things that we've been looking at for the last five years is that our regulations which underpin procurement are EU directives. They were transposed from the EU law and obviously were written with the single market in mind.
01:36
Lindsay Maguire
So when we left the eu, there's a huge opportunity to reshape some of those regulations and legislation that underpins public procurement and make it more suitable for the uk, and that includes making it easier for small businesses and all of those good topics. So that's really where social value fits in that we want to take a whole life view of value in procurement. So it's not just about lowest cost, it's not just about the transaction of buying. Procurement is quite a big and strategic enabler to deliver on some of the country's wider goals. So that's why we're doing it. And that's why the kind of topic of procurement reform is really important.
02:20
Sarah Stone
That phrase strategic enabler is so important, because I think that's why a lot of people that I know, certainly it's why I work in social value, because it is such a powerful, wonderful tool, isn't it? And I think a lot of people don't really realise that already grasp that.
02:34
Lindsay Maguire
Yeah, absolutely. I think that's right. So, I mean, procurement, because it's such a powerhouse in terms of money, you know, we are talking about a lot of money. If you get your procurement Right. And if you look at what you're delivering through your procurement and through those contracts, you can deliver a lot more. So you can actually deliver on your own kind of priorities for your organisation. So having a good understanding of what is right in the marketplace and how we can best deliver on that just means that we're maximising everything that we're doing.
03:05
Lindsay Maguire
And I do genuinely believe, and this is my personal view, but obviously is echoed by the Government, is that if we're letting contracts that are using taxpayers money, then those contracts have to be fairly solid, they have to be upstanding, they have to be in line with our kind of moral judgments, but they also have to deliver for the communities that they're being provided in, because that's how we maximise the strength of that taxpayer pound.
03:28
Sarah Stone
It's such an important point and I think you kind of can't say it enough. You can't say it enough times, because I say, you know, the public sector wants to buy from suppliers that operate in a way that's aligned with the public sector's values. And it's about going over and above what's legally required and the legally mandated minimum. And if you're looking for ideas for social value, it's all there. You know, the amount of policy guidance that's put out by departments every year is huge. And there's an awful lot of recommendations and a lot of things that government and policymakers want companies to do and the private sector to do that sits out with minimum legal requirements. And so go and look in those documents and read them and look and see what you can voluntarily implement.
04:15
Lindsay Maguire
Yeah, absolutely. We'll come on to this in a bit, but this needs to be proportionate to what you're buying. I think where there's a real benefit to some of the work that we've done within government commercial function and with the Procurement act, is that we've got some very healthy networks and champions across the whole of the public sector who are doing brilliant stuff. So there is a huge amount of information and ideas out there on social value. I would strongly recommend anyone who is interested in it to have a look at the examples that have been done, because that might give you food for thought on how to embed that in the future.
04:50
Lindsay Maguire
I think the private sector has also got quite an important role to play in this in terms their own, you know, corporate objectives and really sort of using that private sector and corporate insight into delivering and maximising this social value across the piece.
05:06
Sarah Stone
And are there any, you know, you Talked about the examples of things that have been done. Is there anywhere specific that you. I'm putting you on the spot here a bit now. Any. Any really brilliant resources or really great. Or is it more that, you know, because every department does put out, you know, this is what social value means to us. Here are some examples. Is there anything in particular that you've seen and you've gone, oh, that's really good.
05:25
Lindsay Maguire
So I find that central government, because of the nature of some of the stuff it buys, the fact that it's very kind of national focused at times, it can actually be quite difficult to generate very live examples of social value. But if you look at the kind of local government sector, and if you look at, like, housing, for example, with universities, they have a very direct link with the communities and there's been some absolutely brilliant examples. So Liverpool City Council, for example, do really great stuff on education. So if they're letting a tech contract, they'll have academies for, you know, girls coding, you know, really kind of live examples of how the private sector can deliver against some of those aspirations. Transport, for example, National Highways won a few social value awards on how they're working with social enterprises.
06:18
Lindsay Maguire
But it's not only when there is like a direct link to a location or a community. I've also seen some good examples where, you know, nationwide contracts also include, you know, international education. You know, let's see how we can do a programme that would bring, kind of school children in countries in Africa up to speed on the kind of coding. There's loads and loads of different examples and I think taking a cross sector approach to some of this probably is quite helpful sometimes. So it's not just about what the mod is buying, it's also about what your local council is buying and how they are generating value within their communities. Because it's a slightly different perspective, but we've all got something that we can learn from each other.
06:58
Sarah Stone
And you never stop learning, do you?
07:00
Lindsay Maguire
No, exactly.
07:00
Sarah Stone
Just pick on one thing before it gets back on track. One thing that you said there and you mentioned about an international example, and actually one of the questions that somebody had sent into me and asked if we could ask was about whether or not social value has to be created in the UK or whether if you create social value overseas, does that count? Would you have answer to that? What would your answer be?
07:22
Lindsay Maguire
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think it all depends on what you're buying. So if you're the fcdo, the Foreign Commonwealth Development Office, then absolutely. Generating value in areas overseas would be 100% beneficial. I think the key thing for social value for me is there's no right or wrong, but it's got to match what it is that you want in terms of your own organisation strategy and also match the proportion of what it is that you're buying. So where I've seen slightly bad examples of social value, it's where it's disproportionate. It's essentially where, you know, a kind of contracting authority is buying office furniture. But the social value requirements are to provide apprentices in a certain location. Like it's not proportionate. And that's where some of the tension around this comes.
08:07
Lindsay Maguire
There's no right or wrong as long as it fits with your kind of overarching organisation strategy.
08:13
Sarah Stone
I would say, yeah, it's that relevance, isn't it? Like, is it relevant to the contract? Yeah. And I think if you're a supplier and you're delivering to that contract, if you're a buyer, then obviously it's relevant to what you're buying, but if you're a supplier, it's relevant to what you're delivering. So, yeah, brilliant. Okay, that's really helpful for people. Thank you. And one other thing, you talked about some training and some support that's out there that's coming for suppliers, I believe. Is that right or is that more around the Procurement Act?
08:39
Lindsay Maguire
That's more about the Procurement Act. But there are a couple of areas of social value where the Procurement act touches which will be covered in some of our supplier kind of campaign messages.
08:49
Sarah Stone
Yeah, perfect. Because that's the one thing suppliers often say to me. They say, oh, where do we go for guidance? And I say all the guidance that's out there is written for procurers, but you can get an awful lot from it yourself because you'll understand how the model works, but it's not specifically, you know, aligned to you.
09:04
Lindsay Maguire
Yeah, I think actually that's really important. And this is always a slight misconception that there has to be sort of specific and very clear guidance for suppliers. Whereas actually a lot of the stuff that we do is written for procurement teams. But if a supplier wants to access those contracts and want to kind of work in partnership with the public sector, then understanding how procurement teams are structuring and what it is that they're looking for is really important. And having that kind of pre market engagement and that conversation is really valuable. Now, I know that there's pockets of good practise around pre market engagement and it's always Something that we can probably improve, you know, across the public sector, I would say. And the Procurement act goes some way in trying to put emphasis on that.
09:52
Lindsay Maguire
But ask if you're not clear about the social value expectations around the specific contract, then ask the authority what it is that they're looking for and try and open that conversation around the needs.
10:03
Sarah Stone
Yeah. This, to me, is one of the things that gets me excited about social value, because I think it presents a real opportunity for the private and the public sector to work more closely together, you know, in partnership, to make sure that public sector services are delivered better. Yeah, better is a terrible word, but you know what I mean.
10:18
Lindsay Maguire
Yeah, definitely.
10:19
Sarah Stone
Yeah, yeah. So the new Procurement Act. Let's talk about that for a minute. Obviously, that's a huge part of your role, so there's been a slight delay with.
10:26
Lindsay Maguire
Yeah. The commencement.
10:27
Sarah Stone
And so what's behind that and what's happening with it, Just to sort of.
10:30
Lindsay Maguire
Take a slight step back, said for me, one of the key bits about the Procurement act is it's not necessarily about the detail of the legislation, because that is important, but it's also technical and it kind of, you know, will sort of set the parameters around how we do procurement. But in addition to that, we've also got a mechanism to set out the sort of strategic priorities for procurement in what's known as the National Procurement Policy Statement, the mpps, which is the catchy title. And our idea a few years ago, essentially, was to say, I think it's not appropriate to put lots of requirements in primary legislation, mainly because procurement touches everything, so you wouldn't necessarily want the same requirements when you're buying a warship versus buying a school building.
11:16
Lindsay Maguire
But what we do want to do is recognise that procurement is important to deliver on those priorities. So we've got this part of the act, which is the mpps, and our plan before the election was called, was to go live in October 28th with the MPPS, which was written against the priorities of the previous Conservative government. That was published, that was laid, that was all ready to be implemented. Now, obviously, the timing of the election meant that we've got a new government and it's completely right and understandable that the new government has got their own priorities that they're generating around what procurement looks like. There were some clear signifiers in the manifesto about how procurement can be delivered for good, especially in employment rights and other areas. So nothing in the baseline of the act is actually changing.
12:09
Lindsay Maguire
What will be different is the overarching strategic priorities that people will have to have regard to whether to do procurement. So when we do go live on the 24th of February, we'll have a new sort of set of strategic priorities that everyone can crack on in developing what their procurements look like going forward.
12:27
Sarah Stone
What are the big changes that the act will bring and specifically in relation to social value, because obviously there's a lot in the Act.
12:36
Lindsay Maguire
Yeah, sure. So I think the MPPS is key for social value. So that's how we're going to deliver our sort of, I don't like using the word softer areas because I don't think social value is necessarily soft, but that's how we're going to deliver our sort of non fixed priorities that would be shifting based on where we are, where the government is. We're also making a switch from meat to mat. Now this is very techy, but essentially at the moment when you assess procurement, it's based on most economically advantageous tender, which is known as meat. We've changed that. So it's now most advantageous tinder. Now that's not saying that price isn't important.
13:19
Lindsay Maguire
Obviously price is always going to be a factor in what we do because we're spending taxpayers money and it's right that price is prevalent, but it is much more than just the bottom line, low price. So we really want to start thinking about how to get that whole life value. So in some areas, and I have actually seen examples of this in certain areas, you know, there doesn't need to be a price. Maybe actually the delivery of the outcomes and the social value and all of the sort of things that surround that in your conditions when you're doing your procurement is the value. That's quite a radical sort of position. We're not abolishing price.
13:57
Sarah Stone
No. Explain that to me. I'm super interested by that.
14:00
Lindsay Maguire
So there's been a bit of discussion and this is probably very sort of.
14:04
Sarah Stone
Theoretical, just for anyone listening, we're getting geeky now.
14:08
Lindsay Maguire
You could actually evaluate a procurement without looking at the price. So one of the real benefits of the Procurement act is it encourages a lot more flexibility. So we've got a new competitive flexible procedure which essentially allows procurement teams to design what procurement should look like for a specific category, specific marketplace. And if you're working in something which is brand new, complex niche, you know, lots of kind of challenges out there, especially in the context of climate and, you know, new energy, then maybe you actually don't care about the price so you could evaluate it entirely on that outcome. So if your outcome is you want to achieve a certain level of carbon reduction in a specific area, then that can be your evaluation criteria and you wouldn't necessarily have to consider price.
14:58
Lindsay Maguire
Now, obviously that is quite radical and I don't see in the current climate that lots of organisations are going to be rushing to sort of, you know, evaluate without actually taking economics into the case, but depending on what you're buying.
15:12
Sarah Stone
But it does make your future, even just thinking about it as an idea does make your brain fire a bit, doesn't it? And, yeah, it reminds me of conversations that I often have because we often get brought in normally it's a really big procurement, really high value, really complex, really long term. These are the kind of things that we get involved in mainly, but we get brought in when the supplier, they know who their competitors are and they know in terms of price, the market's fairly competitive, you know, the price is fairly match. So they know that in terms of scoring, they're going to score similar to their competitors. Basically, price isn't going to be a differentiator. So they're looking at the whole of their bid and they're saying, how can we differentiate across all kinds of areas?
15:51
Sarah Stone
And one of them is social value, and that's why they end up coming to me. So if you think about. If you're not differentiated, you are effectively doing that, aren't you? You know, the evaluators going, we check price, it's, you know, within budget, they're the same, roughly. So let's look at the rest of it. And it's not that far away really from what actually happens in some bids, I imagine.
16:10
Lindsay Maguire
Yeah, absolutely.
16:11
Sarah Stone
It's very exciting.
16:12
Lindsay Maguire
So ideas, Food for thought. Yeah, yeah.
16:14
Sarah Stone
So not a government policy?
16:17
Lindsay Maguire
No, no.
16:18
Sarah Stone
So meet to match. Really exciting. What else is happening in terms of Procurement Act? So did I read something about requirements for publishing KPIs around social value?
16:27
Lindsay Maguire
Yes. So not necessarily. So we haven't legislated to require KPIs around social value. But one of the things that we've recognised about procurement is that we put lots of effort onto the front end. So the actual procurement, the evaluation, as I've said, all of that getting to contract, but then when it actually goes into that contract management phase, it's not as robust. So the government commercial function has invested heavily in contract management training programme. We've worked with lots of contract managers across the public sector on that accreditation. But what we wanted to do with the Procurement act was make sure that transparency and the requirements to publish and do good procurement and, you know, Manage your suppliers, continue throughout the life cycle. So that includes where you're making changes.
17:20
Lindsay Maguire
For example, probably less relevant to social value, but it also includes key performance indicators on contracts and it's only for contracts over 5 million, but you will be required to publish regularly performance against those key performance indicators. Now, this isn't policy and this isn't legislation, but I feel personally, it would be quite interesting if you have a really key bit of social value in your contract, that you include that as one of your KPIs, because a lot of the challenge that we get regularly, and I'm sure this will resonate with a lot of your listeners and yourself and your own expertise, is that you can say what you like at the bid phase, everything gets evaluated. It's all, you know, shiny, it's really exciting.
18:08
Lindsay Maguire
But the management of it and the checking of it and the outcomes that it's actually delivering becomes a bit more challenging as you go through the contract. So I think having that KPI and having that ability to sort of check in on what outcomes are being delivered through social value is really quite a good tool, especially when you have a major contract, the social value of which is being, you know, kind of generated in local communities. Now, as I say, this isn't government policy, it's just an idea that people might want to think about how to embed that into their contracts.
18:43
Sarah Stone
Yeah, but the policy, the government policy is this requirement to publish KPIs, but you just haven't been specific about which ones. It's for procurers to decide. Yeah. And it would make sense. Right.
18:52
Lindsay Maguire
And it might be that there's some contracts where actually it doesn't make sense to measure that social value, because the social value is delivered, you know, up front. So, yeah, lots of organisations will do sort of a one off social value, but where there is a continuous approach to.
19:07
Sarah Stone
And you're talking about publishing here. So there'll always be a requirement to measure and report within the contract. Right. You know, to. Oh, yeah, you're talking about publicly publishing that. This was public.
19:17
Lindsay Maguire
Yeah.
19:18
Sarah Stone
I'm asking another question I've always wanted to ask. So are there any KPIs that the cabinet Office asks departments to report on annually that are social value related?
19:28
Lindsay Maguire
That is a good question. And to be honest, I don't think there are. What we do is we do spend. So we do spend. Absolutely. So departments are required to report on how much they're spending with SMEs and that goes down into the supply chain as well. But Actually, the social value metrics, because the model is so specific and tailored to individual procurements, we don't collate that information at an organisational level. And this is always a slight challenge with procurement. Is that because you're delivering social value in the context of what it is that you're buying, reporting on those metrics. There are other things that other teams might do outside of procurement. So, like the skills college, for example, probably keep track of how strategic suppliers then. Yeah.
20:13
Sarah Stone
Is that maybe what I'm thinking of?
20:14
Lindsay Maguire
Yeah. So each strategic supplier has annual review process where we look at how the strategic supplier is working on those metrics. Yeah.
20:22
Sarah Stone
And maybe there's one there. Yeah, that's something.
20:24
Lindsay Maguire
Yeah. But I think your point is completely valid about consistency. So a real challenge for practitioners and across the public sector sometimes is about having consistency in measuring social value and measuring those outcomes. And there's a few tools that I've seen which sort of goes to do that. But there is no one way of saying what constitutes good social value. I definitely think that's something that individual organisations consider and have a look at and how they're actually sort of putting metrics around some of this, because it's not something that we've sort of done centrally and it is quite difficult. Public value is really difficult calculation.
21:04
Sarah Stone
It's really easy to measure outputs, but super hard to measure impact and outcomes. Especially if you don't want to use an economic, you know, a financial proxy value. Yeah. How do you value somebody's happiness or well being or the fact that, you know, their life changed for the better because of something. There are some great people thinking about this space, but I feel like the moment, the focus is really on the kind of. When we talk about KPIs, it is the outputs, it's the number of this and number of that of activity that was delivered, which is really important part of it, isn't it? But. But just to bring us out of that rabbit hole and get us into another one. You mentioned primary legislation a minute ago.
21:46
Sarah Stone
Can you just explain the difference for me, which would be really helpful between primary and secondary legislation?
21:51
Lindsay Maguire
Primary legislation essentially is the headline legislation on the statute book. So it kind of sets the framework of everything that procurement needs to do and procurement teams need to do. Secondary legislation sort of brings out a bit more of the detail around it. So transparency, for example, we have a number of transparency requirements which we want contracting authorities to follow, so publishing a contract. So in primary legislation, we essentially would say the Minister has a power to create requirements on transparency. And then the secondary legislation would be. The requirements on transparency are xyz. So it sort of sets out the details.
22:35
Sarah Stone
So the details.
22:35
Lindsay Maguire
So there's. Yeah, and that tends to be. But not. And I'm by no means like a legislative expert, so please don't ever quote me on this, but it tends to be the kinds of things that may change. So in procurement, we've got lots of thresholds, for example, because a lot of it is dependent on our trade agreements. We've got lots of calculations, competition, you know, lots of things that sort of sit in the background. So the primary legislation will say there's a power to set a threshold for below threshold procurement and the secondary legislation would actually have those thresholds in it, so you can swap them out.
23:10
Sarah Stone
That's super helpful. And so are procurement policy notes. PPNs, are they secondary legislation?
23:16
Lindsay Maguire
No. So PPNs are sort of statutory guidance which hang off powers within legislation, but they're not actually legislation themselves. And this is quite sort of complicated in terms of accountability and how policy is set. Our responsibility, ours in government commercial function and Cabinet Office mandates. Procurement policy for central government. So anyone that's a sort of central government body would have to follow the PPNs. You know, things like payment or carbon reduction plans. You know, a lot of the procurement policy that we publish is for central government, if we want to do stuff wider. So if we want to, you know, legislate for the. The whole of the public sector, that generally requires legislation, secondary legislation, and that's where the transparency requirements come in.
24:11
Sarah Stone
And that is why the social value model applies to central government, but not local government, essentially.
24:17
Lindsay Maguire
Yeah.
24:18
Sarah Stone
And can local government bodies use the social value model if they wanted to? Can they voluntarily decide that PPNA620 applies to them if they wanted to? There's no reason why they couldn't.
24:29
Lindsay Maguire
Yeah. I mean, it's a good model. It's not much cheap, it's good practise. Obviously, there are lots of other models and there's lots of other ways of generating social value, but anything that we publish as a PPN, and lots of organisations do, you know, take that on board and sort of think that this is a good. What we will do going forward is obviously we have to rehash some of those PPNs and look at making sure that everything is aligned with the Procurement act. And we've got a double requirement now because we've got to align it with the Procurement act, but we've also got to align it with the priorities of the new government. So we need to just make sure that everything is consistent.
25:01
Sarah Stone
Yeah, so that's what I was going to ask you. So are there any plans to update the PPNO 620, the social value model?
25:08
Lindsay Maguire
So, I mean, there is a new government, so I think these are all things that we're working through with them at the moment about what that needs to look like. I think the focus at the moment is the National Procurement Policy Statement and the go live of the Procurement Act. But obviously all of the sort of non legislative policy that sits underneath that is all kind of being discussed in the.
25:28
Sarah Stone
You're working your way through it?
25:29
Lindsay Maguire
Yeah, we're working our way through it, yeah.
25:31
Sarah Stone
Then we'll look at the secondary legislation, then we'll look at the PPNs. Get it. And so in terms of how social value is applied, are there any plans to put anything in secondary legislation about social value? Because it's all currently sitting in the model at the moment, isn't it, in the PPNs?
25:45
Lindsay Maguire
I think our legislative mechanism for social value is the National Procurement Policy Statement. So I think that allows us that flexibility and that is in primary legislation. We had a big debate about this and actually it was one of the. The sort of main political debates when we took the Procurement Bill, as was then, through the House of. Well, the House of Lords in particular, but the House of Commons also debated it quite heavily at what level you want to put requirements into primary legislation, recognising that in reality, the more you put in primary legislation, the more potential burden you're creating on the system. And our sort of principle throughout was proportionality and making sure that weren't overburdening a. What in some cases is actually just quite a technical kind of bureaucratic process.
26:35
Sarah Stone
Yeah.
26:36
Lindsay Maguire
So I think there's always like a flip side to this and actually getting that balance right is part of what we have been working on. And that's why the MPPS acts as this flexible delivery of strategic and social value priorities, rather than having a list of things in primary legislation which may have overloaded some of the stuff that we're buying.
26:59
Sarah Stone
Yeah, that makes complete sense. And also just to make people aware, the word social value don't actually appear in the Procurement act, do they?
27:05
Lindsay Maguire
No.
27:06
Sarah Stone
What are we calling. Are we calling it public?
27:08
Lindsay Maguire
So the principle is maximising public interest. So essentially when you are entering into a procurement, there's a number of objectives and principles which you have to kind of have in your mind, and one of them is maximising public interest. Alongside acting with integrity, value for money, there's a few of them, but it's public interest and actually we have grappled with some of the definitions around this. It is absolutely fine to talk about social value in the way that we talk about it, because that was understood, but when it comes to defining some of this stuff in law, that's not that straightforward. So there's lots of things that we.
27:41
Sarah Stone
Kind of always think, not at all.
27:43
Lindsay Maguire
No, relatively straightforward, but then you actually come and put it on the statute book and it's like, yeah, it's not easy.
27:50
Sarah Stone
Yeah. And that's the problem with legislation, isn't it? That's why this approach works, because it's so hard to define things in law and write them down. This is really interesting. Thank you very much. I've got a couple of final quick questions and don't worry if you can't answer them. One of them is who sets procurement policy for local government if the procurement policy notes only apply to central? So is there an equivalent for local and are there any plans to make the social value model apply to local government as well as central? Because one of the things that suppliers often tell me is how tricky it is for them because there is such a variety in terms of approaches. Is that something that the government's looking at?
28:28
Lindsay Maguire
So probably not, but I think that's probably by design because obviously local government, when they're spending money, they're accountable to their councillors and their chief execs and it's elected, so they will obviously have their own priorities. And the same for universities, for example, so they have sort requirements to their sort of student bodies and their trustees. So it's not the same as kind of coming straight down from, you know, ministers. So I think the opportunity here is best practise sharing, cross sector collaboration, talking education, capability building around social value. And there is so much good practise across the piece. Well, like your podcast for example, and information building and, you know, kind of highlighting where resources can be found that I think will be the kind of benefit and the draw rather than you must do X with Y.
29:22
Sarah Stone
And in terms of the new government, obviously all focus at the moment is on the mpps, but there was a number of things they mentioned that they would do when they were in opposition. Now I know you won't be able to go into any detail, but they talked about things like a social value council and a new national procurement plan and, you know, having social value requirements that were mandated, linked to payment of tax and that kind of thing. Are you able to tell us anything about where those plans are and what might be coming, what we might want to look out for or watch out for, and how we could engage as well? If there are people that really want to engage with the government and the policymakers who are thinking about this, how can they get involved?
29:56
Lindsay Maguire
Yeah. So as you'd expect, then the sort of new government is kind of framing where they are. We've set up the mission delivery unit, so that is playing quite a key part. And procurement is obviously got a role to play in that. Like in terms of mission delivery. Procurement is, I think, always going to be quite important to the government because it's such an enabler and it's such a driver of growth, both in terms of productivity and kind of macroeconomic. So I think it's definitely a work in progress. But when we're ready to communicate, we'll be communicating that kind of quite widely through our regular channels. We've got quite an audience for sort of procurement announcements, I think. Watch this space on. On that one.
30:35
Sarah Stone
Yeah, perfect. Thank you so much for your time, Lindsay. It's been absolutely brilliant talking to you.
30:38
Lindsay Maguire
Thanks.
30:40
Sarah Stone
I'm Sarah Stone and you've been listening to let's Talk Social Value. You can find all our previous episodes on our website or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And if you found this useful, then please do share the episode with your networks and consider leaving us a review. I'd love to know what you think of that episode, so please reach out to me and let me know. You can find me on LinkedIn or contact me on our website. Website www.samataler.co uk. See you next time.