Yesterday, Stephen Henagulph, Business Development Director at local integrated marketing & communications agency Ontrac, asked the Prime Minister on The World at One, about the future of public sector procurement spending on a live broadcast from the BBC’s World at One. To his surprise, Gordon Brown said “I’d like to bring you in to advise us”.

Stephen, who has worked in the South West within a variety of disciplines in the private sector for over 20 years, asked Gordon Brown how he intends to carry out his plans of cutting waste in terms of time, money and resources to both the taxpayer and the private sector. Said Stephen: “I have no political axe to grind. This was purely a business question for the Prime Minister on behalf of many hard-working local businesses – many of whom currently work closely with the public sector.

“It is common knowledge both inside and outside the Government that there is a lot of waste in the public sector procurement process – and we see this regularly in the marketing tenders we receive. My question was basically ‘how is Gordon Brown, together with the private sector, planning to reduce that waste and the huge amount of stress it is causing?”

So did Stephen feel that the Prime Minister answered his question?

“Obviously it’s a live broadcast and there is always enormous time pressure”, said Stephen. “Initially he gave me an answer about ‘shared procurement’, centralised delivery processes and a paper to support it. But then, to my astonishment, he said “I’d like to bring you in to advise us!”.

Gordon Brown also promised Stephen that he would send his ‘shared procurement process’ for him to read and comment on. “Great. If he sends it to me I’ll read it, “said Stephen, “and I’ll look forward to it. And I will be asking other businesses in the South West for their views as well, because this is an issue that affects everyone in this region – not just Ontrac”