The King’s Speech came and went without the Procurement Bill many people had expected to see. This matters because public procurement should not be some dry administrative process buried in Whitehall. It is one of the most powerful economic tools government has to shape the economy and to address the cost of living crisis.

Every year around £385 billion of public money flows through procurement. That money shapes jobs, wages, local economies and the quality of life in communities across the country. It decides whether public money supports good employers or rewards a race to the bottom.

As of right now, the UK government is still refusing to use procurement as a serious market-shaping tool while the devolved authorities of Scotland and Wales have made greater progress.

To be fair, UK Ministers have not done nothing. The introduction of the Procurement Act 2023 for England Wales and Northern Ireland in February 2025 was marked by a new National Procurement Policy Statement and further consultation on how procurement could be improved.  In March 2026, the government announced a series of reforms linked to its “Growing British Industry, Jobs and Skills” agenda. These included new SME spending targets for central government departments and arms-length bodies, proposals for future VCSE targets, prompt payment measures for large contracts and updated social value guidance.

The Procurement Bill expected in the King’s Speech would have gone further. The proposals included requiring large contracting authorities to publish SME and VCSE spending targets, introducing a public interest test before major outsourcing decisions, creating more flexibility around people-focused services and allowing contracting authorities to specify where social value should be delivered locally. There were also proposals around social value reporting and a minimum weighting linked to jobs, opportunities and skills on larger contracts.

These are important reforms. They recognise something government has often avoided saying openly: procurement is not neutral. Public spending shapes markets. It influences who survives, who grows, what kind of jobs are created and what standards employers are expected to meet. Our experience of the impact of the Procurement Act, little more than a year after its introduction, is that little has changed in a practical sense for community businesses within the public procurement process. If anything, cost pressures on public authorities are squeezing contracts even further.

So, this is also where the proposals from the UK government became too cautious.

The government still appears reluctant to use procurement as a full market-shaping tool across the whole economy. The reforms would have improved procurement processes and strengthened social value requirements, but they stopped short of setting a clear national direction around good work itself. That matters because the problem with procurement in Britain is not simply procedural. It is structural.

Too often public contracts still reward the cheapest bid rather than the best employer. Companies able to drive down wages and conditions continue to gain an advantage over organisations investing in staff, training and workforce wellbeing. Good employers are undercut while insecure work spreads through sectors that millions of people rely on every day.

The people who pay the price are the workers who keep the country running every single day — cleaners, carers, caterers, maintenance workers, drivers and frontline teams. Too many remain trapped in low-paid, insecure jobs with little stability and few opportunities to progress. Then we act surprised when communities struggle, productivity remains weak and public services face endless recruitment crises.

“Cheap work” costs us all. Taxpayers pick up the tab through rising in-work poverty, housing support, poor physical and mental health and growing pressure on public services. The NHS pays when insecure work damages wellbeing. Communities pay when working people cannot build stable lives despite doing essential jobs.

Cheap work is not actually cheap. It simply moves the cost elsewhere — and the public ends up paying anyway.

That is why procurement reform should have gone further. A genuinely ambitious approach would recognise that public money should actively shape the market towards good work. The Real Living Wage, secure employment and decent working conditions should be baseline expectations attached to all public contracts, not optional extras considered only in parts of the system. Because public money should create public good.

If Government is serious about growth and national renewal, then procurement cannot simply be about buying services more efficiently. It has to become a tool for building a stronger everyday economy — one that rewards good employers instead of continuing the race to the bottom where the  majority of us remain the losers.