The UK Government's Low Value Purchase System is a Waste of Time

It can be hard running a small business. If you want to sell to a large organisation like the UK Government, there are forms to fill in, checks to comply with, tenders to bid on, and a hundred other things. Luckily, there's the RM6237 Low Value Purchase System to make everything better. If a department wants to buy something below a certain threshold, they can contact any of the registered suppliers and just buy it. No complicated paperwork, cheaper prices, win-win! Except, there's on annoying bit of bureaucracy. Every month I have to tell the Government Commercial Agency what business I've done. Fair enough, I guess. Let them know how many paperclips I've sold to the Ministry of Administrative Affairs. But there's a wrinkle. What if I've sold nothing? Well, I still have to log on, wait for an MFA code to be send, click through, and report "No Business". I think that's a waste of time. But I wondered how much time it collectively wastes for the nation's small businesses. So I filed a…