UK tech minister vows more whole-government megadeals after £9B Microsoft pact
(2025/12/08)
- Reference: 1765191385
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2025/12/08/uk_tech_deals/
- Source link:
The UK tech minister has promised more whole-government deals with industry giants following its £9 billion agreement with Microsoft, and is seeking to target cloud service providers.
Speaking to MPs last week, Liz Kendall said the government was addressing the lack of competition among the government's major tech vendors, which had led to concerns about value for money.
Faced with £40B budget hole, UK public sector commits £9B to Microsoft [1]READ MORE
"We're systematically looking at tech spend across central government and public services [including] negotiating whole government agreements... We're going to start with end user services, like laptops, but also cloud, to make sure we get the best value for money," she told the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee.
The commitment follows a string of setbacks in the government's handling of the largest tech suppliers, especially in the provision of cloud services.
In February 2024, The Register [2]reported that officials from the from the Central Digital & Data Office admitted the government's approach to cloud adoption had resulted in: "risk concentration and vendor lock-in that inhibit UK government's negotiating power over the cloud vendors."
[3]
Earlier this year, Andrew Forzani, chief commercial officer in the Cabinet Office, [4]told a Parliamentary spending watchdog that if the government wanted to use its spending power to strike better deals with the top cloud providers, individual departments needed to improve how they aligned their requirements.
[5]
[6]
Also speaking before the select committee, Emran Mian, permanent secretary at the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, said the department, which is now home to the Government Digital Service (GDS) and a Digital Commercial Centre of Excellence (DCCE), was looking to emulate the Strategic Partnership Arrangement 2024 (SPA24) announced with Microsoft in October 2024. The Memorandum of Understanding is set to see approximately £9 billion spent over five years, equating to around £1.9 billion each year, the government estimates.
[7]UK digital ID plan gets a price tag at last – £1.8B
[8]Calls grow for inquiry into UK data watchdog after MoD leak
[9]UK politicians to draft outage blueprint after AWS calamity
[10]UK government on the lookout for bargain-priced CTO
"The new deal that we've done with Microsoft drove much lower prices across the range of products. We noticed as a consequence that customers across government waited to renew their purchases from Microsoft until we'd done the deal and signed their new contracts because we'd been able to negotiate a better deal," he said.
"Where we are buying from big vendors, we need to improve the value for money that we get. We've done that with Microsoft. We've also done a strategic agreement with Google on the buying of Google Cloud, which again has the same objective."
In July, former UK tech minister Peter Kyle – [11]who Kendall replaced in September – announced an agreement with Google, although [12]officials later told The Reg it "defines how we will work together going forward, but doesn't comprise any specific commercial agreement."
[13]
The government also has framework agreements for large cloud providers. It is [14]currently tendering for the G-Cloud 15 framework , valued at up to £14 billion.
The challenge for the government will be to make cloud agreements sufficiently general to be useful across government but specific enough to fit departments' individual architectures and workloads. ®
Get our [15]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/07/uk_microsoft_spending/
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/04/uk_cddo_admits_cloud_spending_lock_issues_exclusive/
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/publicsector&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aTavxnTX7jwD_MtPnvZSDwAAAJM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/28/uk_government_cloud_strategy/
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/publicsector&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aTavxnTX7jwD_MtPnvZSDwAAAJM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/publicsector&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aTavxnTX7jwD_MtPnvZSDwAAAJM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/28/digital_id_cost/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/25/ico_inquiry_afghan_mod/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/29/uk_govt_outage_plan/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/29/uk_government_cto/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2025/09/08/uk_cabinet_reshuffle_tech/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/16/uk_gov_google_comment/
[13] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/publicsector&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aTavxnTX7jwD_MtPnvZSDwAAAJM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/28/uk_g_cloud_15/
[15] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Speaking to MPs last week, Liz Kendall said the government was addressing the lack of competition among the government's major tech vendors, which had led to concerns about value for money.
Faced with £40B budget hole, UK public sector commits £9B to Microsoft [1]READ MORE
"We're systematically looking at tech spend across central government and public services [including] negotiating whole government agreements... We're going to start with end user services, like laptops, but also cloud, to make sure we get the best value for money," she told the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee.
The commitment follows a string of setbacks in the government's handling of the largest tech suppliers, especially in the provision of cloud services.
In February 2024, The Register [2]reported that officials from the from the Central Digital & Data Office admitted the government's approach to cloud adoption had resulted in: "risk concentration and vendor lock-in that inhibit UK government's negotiating power over the cloud vendors."
[3]
Earlier this year, Andrew Forzani, chief commercial officer in the Cabinet Office, [4]told a Parliamentary spending watchdog that if the government wanted to use its spending power to strike better deals with the top cloud providers, individual departments needed to improve how they aligned their requirements.
[5]
[6]
Also speaking before the select committee, Emran Mian, permanent secretary at the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, said the department, which is now home to the Government Digital Service (GDS) and a Digital Commercial Centre of Excellence (DCCE), was looking to emulate the Strategic Partnership Arrangement 2024 (SPA24) announced with Microsoft in October 2024. The Memorandum of Understanding is set to see approximately £9 billion spent over five years, equating to around £1.9 billion each year, the government estimates.
[7]UK digital ID plan gets a price tag at last – £1.8B
[8]Calls grow for inquiry into UK data watchdog after MoD leak
[9]UK politicians to draft outage blueprint after AWS calamity
[10]UK government on the lookout for bargain-priced CTO
"The new deal that we've done with Microsoft drove much lower prices across the range of products. We noticed as a consequence that customers across government waited to renew their purchases from Microsoft until we'd done the deal and signed their new contracts because we'd been able to negotiate a better deal," he said.
"Where we are buying from big vendors, we need to improve the value for money that we get. We've done that with Microsoft. We've also done a strategic agreement with Google on the buying of Google Cloud, which again has the same objective."
In July, former UK tech minister Peter Kyle – [11]who Kendall replaced in September – announced an agreement with Google, although [12]officials later told The Reg it "defines how we will work together going forward, but doesn't comprise any specific commercial agreement."
[13]
The government also has framework agreements for large cloud providers. It is [14]currently tendering for the G-Cloud 15 framework , valued at up to £14 billion.
The challenge for the government will be to make cloud agreements sufficiently general to be useful across government but specific enough to fit departments' individual architectures and workloads. ®
Get our [15]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/07/uk_microsoft_spending/
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/04/uk_cddo_admits_cloud_spending_lock_issues_exclusive/
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/publicsector&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aTavxnTX7jwD_MtPnvZSDwAAAJM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/28/uk_government_cloud_strategy/
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/publicsector&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aTavxnTX7jwD_MtPnvZSDwAAAJM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/publicsector&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aTavxnTX7jwD_MtPnvZSDwAAAJM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/28/digital_id_cost/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/25/ico_inquiry_afghan_mod/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/29/uk_govt_outage_plan/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/29/uk_government_cto/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2025/09/08/uk_cabinet_reshuffle_tech/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/16/uk_gov_google_comment/
[13] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/publicsector&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aTavxnTX7jwD_MtPnvZSDwAAAJM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/28/uk_g_cloud_15/
[15] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/