My hon. Friend, whose experience in local government is huge and much more recent than mine, is absolutely right. That is the irony—what was a theoretical process none the less caused considerable delay and cost for local authorities seeking to carry out a range of capital works. I hope the Government will say, “Let’s seize the advantage and simplify the public procurement process.”
For a raft of reasons that have been well rehearsed and that I need not repeat, local authorities are hard pressed for cash, and we could certainly make their lives easier by enabling them to save money in the way they do their procurement. We can make it easier for them to adopt a policy of sourcing contractors locally, as they already try to do, so that they can be drivers of support for businesses in their area, without needing to parcel up contracts artificially, as was historically the case to avoid the need to go through the OJEU process. That is one area where I hope the Minister, whose own experience in local government is considerable, will talk urgently and swiftly to his colleagues in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government so that we can sit down with the local government sector and get rapid reform of local government procurement rules.
So without more ado, I commend the Bill, now that the little obstacle that might potentially have been in its way has, I hope, been resolved. We can now get on with the serious business of making the best of what is, to be frank, a bad job. This is not where I wanted to be, but it is in the interests of the country that we have a proper working set of rules to enhance the internal market in the United Kingdom.