asked the Minister for the Civil Service what arrangements there are in his Department to ensure that small businesses receive a proportion of all purchasing contracts issued by his Department; and what proportion he expects this will be in 1979–80 and 1980–81.

The Departments for which I am responsible have no special arrangements of this kind. In particular, the Civil Service Department is not a major purchasing Department. Computers and computer services are the largest category of purchase by the CSD, the arrangements for which remain substantially unchanged from those reported to this House in March 1971.—[Vol. 812, c. 419.]