After an initial meeting with the Cabinet Office, the working group, tasked with encouraging more SMEs to do business with the public sector, said that the government had become less forceful in its commitment.

At the end of last year, the government told its key suppliers that government contracts would be opened up to smaller suppliers, in an effort to end the era of "".

It was followed by Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude's in February, which outlined the reforms that the government intended to make. This included a requirement for all government departments to publish a set of specific, targeted actions to achieve 25 percent of their business with SMEs.

The New Suppliers to Government working group, led by open source software specialist Sirius's CEO Mark Taylor, was one of three groups that were set up to help the government realise its ambitions.

"The Cabinet Office's position is that they are working hard on the minister's programme, but that it will take time because it's a business development decision. That's not really good enough," said Taylor.