I thank my right hon. Friend for his comments. He will have heard me say earlier that we understand his views that “sensitive” could incorporate a broader range of assets, where information gleaned on the movement of officials and politicians could be detrimental to our national security.
I reaffirm our commitment to make a statement in the House within six months of Royal Assent, setting out the timeline for the removal from sensitive sites of surveillance equipment supplied by companies subject to the national intelligence law of China. I state again my gratitude to my right hon. Friend for his important work in this area and for the constructive dialogue that we have had with colleagues on the matter.
Amendment 3, tabled by the hon. Member for St Helens South and Whiston (Ms Rimmer), introduces a new ground for the exclusion of suppliers involved in forced organ harvesting. The amendment replicates an amendment made to the Bill in the other House, and subsequently removed by Committee of this House. I reassure her that the Government are not turning a blind eye to the extraordinarily important subject that she raises and highlights consistently.
We are in full agreement that complicity in the abuses associated with the overseas organ trade must not be tolerated. The Government have taken action to address that issue on a number of fronts. The Health and Care Act 2022 prohibits commercial organ tourism. I know the hon. Lady was involved in discussions leading to those provisions being included in the Act. The Government continue to monitor and review evidence relating to reports of forced organ harvesting in China, and maintain a dialogue with leading NGOs and international partners on that very important issue. I reassure her that forced organ harvesting is already covered by the exclusion grounds for professional misconduct. These grounds cover serious breaches of all ethical and professional standards—whether mandatory or not—that apply to different industries and sectors. The mandatory grounds in relation to corporate manslaughter and human trafficking are also relevant in this context. We have sought to limit the grounds—particularly those which, like this one, require an assessment of factual circumstances by the contracting authority—to those where there is a major and particular risk to public procurement. We are not aware of any evidence that a supplier to the UK public sector has been involved in forced organ harvesting, but I want to reassure the hon. Lady that the Bill will be able to deal with this horrendous practice appropriately.
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Amendment 18, tabled by the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Florence Eshalomi), would introduce a new discretionary ground for exclusion in relation to labour law infringements in the past year. In my view, the amendment is unnecessary. We have already made explicit provision for a new discretionary exclusion ground to disregard bids from suppliers that are known to use forced labour or perpetuate modern slavery themselves or in their supply chains when that has occurred in the last five years. Furthermore, we have expanded the scope of the mandatory exclusion
grounds for serious labour offences, with new grounds including refusal or wilful neglect to pay the national minimum wage and offences relating to employment agencies. Additionally, when the treatment of workers and the protection of their rights is relevant to the contract being procured, contracting authorities are entitled to set conditions of participation in these areas, and to evaluate treatment of workers as part of the award criteria in assessing tenders. The Government have published detailed guidance for contracting authorities to apply this to their procurements.
New clause 16, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely), would require the Secretary of State to make provision for eradicating the use of goods or services that have been tainted by modern slavery. Of course there is no place for modern slavery in our supply chains, and there is already comprehensive guidance for contracting authorities on assessing and addressing modern slavery risks in supply chains. The guidance refers practitioners to the Global Slavery Index and the United States “List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor” to help them to assess the risk of particular contracts. Since April this year, suppliers have been required to detail their supply chains at selection stage in procurements that have been assessed as “high risk” in relation to modern slavery by a contracting authority. My hon. Friend is no longer in the Chamber, but were he present he would be pleased to hear that we think he has made an important point about forensic supply chain tracing, and we will seek to reflect that in the guidance in future.
As my hon. Friend knows, we are strengthening the grounds for exclusion in relation to modern slavery by expanding the mandatory grounds for serious labour offences and introducing a new discretionary exclusion ground for labour market misconduct. The Bill makes it clear that contracting authorities may apply the grounds for exclusion to supply chains, and must apply them to subcontractors on which they are relying to meet conditions of participation. We are also introducing for the first time in the UK a public debarment list of suppliers that meet a ground for exclusion and pose a risk of the issues re-occurring.
New clause 13, also tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight, aims to ensure that the Government reduce the dependency of public bodies on countries identified as either systemic competitors or threats to the UK by the Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy. I sympathise with my hon. Friend’s position, and have spoken to him about this topic on a few occasions. The need to develop and maintain resilient supply chains is an issue of which the Government are very aware, and I can reassure him that we are already taking steps to manage it. The Department for Business and Trade manages the recently established directorate for global supply chains, which works across Government to strengthen critical supply chains and assess and act on vulnerabilities. As a direct result of the integrated review, it has developed a resilience framework which highlights areas to be explored when dependencies in supply chains are being reduced, and has set up the UK-Australia supply chain resilience initiative to develop and improve public sector approaches to managing critical supply chain risks. The Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure has also published guidance to prevent hostile actors from exploiting vulnerabilities in supply chains.
Improving supplier diversity and resilience is another key strategic priority for procurement, as is set out in the National Procurement Policy Statement. Achieving this objective will be facilitated in the new regime by, for example, the move from “most economically advantageous tender” to “most advantageous tender”, which will encourage contracting authorities to take factors other than price into consideration when developing award criteria. Criteria could include, for example—when it is relevant to the particular contract—the assessment of long-term supply chain resilience, including consideration of geopolitical instability.
Let me now deal with amendments 61 to 67, which were spoken to by my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills), and concern the exclusions regime. Amendments 61 and 62 seek to reduce the factors or commitments from suppliers that contracting authorities can take into consideration when determining if a supplier should be excluded from a procurement. We want the exclusions regime to encourage suppliers to engage with us to get better and operate in a manner that the Government find acceptable, whenever that is possible. Similarly, to reach a valid conclusion, contracting authorities should be able to consider pertinent evidence and information, in whatever way that is presented, and the Bill must support that. This is why the Bill allows for consideration of future commitments by the supplier, which can be verified and monitored by authorities and other appropriate factors. The only restriction on the information that contracting authorities can request is that it must be proportionate in the circumstances.
Amendment 63 seeks to remove the reasonable proportionality test in clause 58(3). It should be noted that this sensible threshold, alongside the broader list of matters that can be taken into account, broadens the ability of the contracting authority from the current regime. It is, however, right that contracting authorities should be proportionate and consider the information requested in light of the specific events being considered. For example, they should refrain from insisting that information is generated that would incur significant cost, if it is not directly related to the question at hand.
Amendments 64 to 66 seek to add various offences relating to economic crime as mandatory exclusion grounds. I believe that my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley suggested in his speech that a conviction for bribery was not a ground for mandatory exclusion. I can assure him that it is. A discretionary cause for exclusion is the failure to prevent bribery. There is a distinction between the two.