It has been an incredibly wide-ranging debate. Everyone has had the opportunity to speak on their own amendments and I find myself trying to speak on everyone’s amendments. I will do my best but if I miss anyone’s it is not personal—it is just that there are a lot of them. I will try to focus on those we are expected to vote on and some that we feel most passionately about.
I was glad to hear the Minister talking about the positions of the Welsh and Scottish Parliaments and recognising that they are consistent with previous positions on trade deals. We consistently believe there is overreach in extending into devolved areas and that is why legislative consent has been withheld on this occasion. Since Brexit particularly, the UK Parliament has been meddling in devolved areas, or allowing itself the power to do so, far more than previously. That is one of the many unfortunate consequences of “bringing back power”: it is power to the Executive, not so much to the devolved Administrations or the rest of us in Parliament.
This Bill is key because the spending of taxpayers’ money for the benefit of, and on behalf of, taxpayers is a hugely powerful and important method the Government can use to ensure that they serve citizens in the best possible way, and that they support behaviours that they want to support and reject those they want to reject, in much the same way as tax laws and new tax measures can be created and implemented to discourage or encourage certain behaviours. There is an opportunity in the Procurement Bill and public procurement to do more than the Government have done in encouraging behaviour.
A number of amendments from Opposition Front Benchers specifically focus on that. I am pleased to see the tax transparency amendment, new clause 10. It makes sense to ask companies to be open and upfront about how much tax they are paying. It is very difficult to find out some of this information and it makes a huge amount of sense that decisions around public procurement could and should be made on the basis of considering whether companies are actually paying the tax they are or should be liable for here.
Amendment 2 from the Opposition on transparency declarations is also incredibly sensible. A number of Members around the House have mentioned the VIP lanes and the fact that there were fast-track contracts in relation to covid. The amendment strikes the right balance. The Government say we need to have fast-track processes and to be able to award contracts quickly. Amendment 2 would still allow that to happen. It would allow the speed that is necessary in emergencies and crises such as covid. It would allow procurement to happen speedily, but would increase the transparency;
whether it is an MP, a peer, a senior civil servant or a Minister, a transparency declaration would be required. We wholeheartedly support that amendment.
I turn to amendment 18 on breaching staff rights. The amendment is once again about trying to encourage the behaviour we want to see. We want to see public money, public spending and public contracts going to companies who treat their workers fairly and do not breach workers’ rights. The amendment sets a high bar on exclusion from public procurement as it is specifically about excluding those companies found guilty by an employment tribunal or a court; it not just on the basis of one whistleblower whose case may not yet have been proven. Once again, we wholeheartedly support that.
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The hon. Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon) is not in his place to talk about the amendments on the real living wage. They are incredibly good and helpful amendments, so I am slightly disappointed that they are not to be moved by the Labour Front-Bench team. It would have been nice to have had a vote on the real living wage and on ensuring that companies who get public money pay workers enough to live on. I cannot believe that we need once again to discuss the fact that people need to be paid enough to live on.
Ensuring that people are paid a more reasonable amount of money is a win-win for the Government, because they would have to give out less money in universal credit. Many people are on universal credit because their wages are not high enough for them to survive on. Ensuring that people are paid the real living wage would reduce the universal credit bill. Workers would feel more valued and not be spending their entire time at work thinking about how on earth they will pay their heating bills.
I apologise to the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) for missing her speech on amendment 60 in relation to the environment. I am sure it was excellent—her speeches always are. I have tabled similar amendments to various Bills in the past. I wholeheartedly agree that the Government need not just to talk the talk on climate change but to write it into every piece of legislation, whether a Finance Bill, procurement guidance and legislation or any kind of Bill. It should have been written into the Advanced Research and Invention Agency Act 2022, for example. For everything that is done, we should consider our environmental impact and our climate change obligations and targets.
We should remember that the Government signed up to those targets—they signed up to the Paris agreement and to the net zero target—but they are not following through. We have all these warm words on climate change—that was not meant to be a pun—but it needs to be the thread running through everything the Government do. We should be leading from the front on climate change, so I support the amendment. I also entirely agree with amendment 17 in relation to SME prompt payment.
The hon. Member for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills) spoke to amendments 61 to 67, which he tabled with the right hon. Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge). At least a couple of my SNP colleagues have also signed them. I agree that the changes asked for would bring the Bill more into line with our expectations in ensuring
that all financial transgressions are included under the Bill. I am therefore pleased that he had the opportunity to speak to those genuinely cross-party amendments—not just in the Members who have led on them but in all their signatories. I hope the Government will listen to those calls and make some changes. I fear that we are beyond the point at which that can happen, but at least the issue has been raised.
The Government have mentioned changes to national security. The right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) tabled new clauses, and he and several other Members raised concerns about China and the use of Chinese technology. In Scotland, we have been phasing out Hikvision cameras, for example. I pressed the Minister on a number of occasions on Hikvision, which has been blacklisted in America, but the UK Government have not taken as much action as I would have liked. I welcome the action taken previously and I welcome the fact that they have now agreed to move on this and bring forward a timeline. I echo the calls made by the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green for an entire phasing out—not just in relation to sensitive sites. He is correct to say that while DWP sites may not be considered sensitive, they absolutely are. The amount of personal data they deal with is extensive and, as a result, the risk to many people is massive. I would like—I think he was calling for the same—all cameras and all technology under Chinese laws to be phased out, and for the Government to make commitments in that regard in the timeline that they will publish in six months’ time.
I am not quite clear from the Minister what will happen with the timeline. How much will we be able to scrutinise it? Will there be a ministerial statement in the House, so that when the timeline is published we can ask questions and raise any concerns or queries, or will the timeline just be a governmental document, with no opportunity for MPs to have a formal scrutiny role? I think the Minister understands the strength of feeling across the House, on a cross-party basis. I hope he will be able to give MPs an opportunity to make criticisms, ask questions and get clarity when the timeline is published.
Amendment 68, tabled by the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose), is on checking that contracts deliver what they say they will deliver. It is important to go further. I have mentioned on a number of occasions that post-legislative review does not take place in the way it should. Many Government Departments are failing, when it comes to post-legislative scrutiny, to work out whether Government policy has achieved its intended aim. We therefore need to go further than the hon. Gentleman suggests. He was talking about the Bill, but it needs to be done for all things where the Government have said, “This policy will raise x amount of money in tax, will cost y amount and will have these outcomes.” I do not think there is effective scrutiny. The Public Accounts Committee cannot possibly cover every single piece of delegated legislation. Government Departments should have the responsibility of doing that. If they are asking us to support subsequent legislation, they should prove to MPs that the previous legislation achieved its aims, or say that it did not and that that is why they want to make a change. The PAC absolutely does a good job but there is a mountain of stuff out there and it cannot possibly look at every single matter. Amendment 68 goes some way on that, but it does not cover all we are looking for.
Finally, we support amendment 3 on organ harvesting, tabled by the hon. Member for St Helens South and Whiston (Ms Rimmer). Concerns about this matter have been raised with me by a significant number of my constituents. I agree that we should take the issue incredibly seriously and I would be more than happy to walk through the Lobby in support of her amendment if she pressed it to a Division. It is not an easy thing to talk about—it is a very difficult thing—and I very much appreciate the fact that she brought it here.
The Bill is necessary: it is necessary to have procurement legislation and it is necessary that we ensure that it is as sound as it can be. I am not sure exactly how much time we will have for Third Reading, but I hope we will have the opportunity to thank all who took part in Committee, particularly the Clerks who, as ever, have been excellent during the passage of the Bill. We will not oppose the Bill on Third Reading, but we will do what we can to support amendments. Again, I welcome the Government’s commitment to make some changes on the back of conversations that they have had with both Conservative and Opposition Members who have been pushing for change.