My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 5, which complements one aspect of my noble friend Lord Lennie’s Amendment 1, as explained in his excellent speech just now. As my noble friend Lord Hain has set out with his customary clarity, the purpose of Amendment 5 is to prevent the GPA undermining or limiting the capacity of public bodies to impose conditions in public contracts that require respect for the rights and protections of the workers engaged to carry out those contracts. The rights and protections identified are limited to those specified by those conventions of the ILO that have been ratified by the UK.
Public procurement is a key tool in the protection of workers’ rights, and has been at least since the fair wages resolution of 1891, which was expanded in 1909 and again in 1946. The resolution required a “fair wages clause” in government contracts which obliged government
contractors to pay the wage rates and abide by the terms and conditions that were set by collective agreements or arbitration in the relevant sector. From 1909 to 1979, collective bargaining was the policy of Governments of all political parties, with the consequence that collective agreements covered well over 80% of the UK workforce for the 40 years leading up to 1979. Since then, there has been a change in government policy and law that has resulted in collective agreements now covering only about 25% of British workers.
However, public procurement requirements can be based on other standards than those of collective agreements, desirable as that would be. Another means of achieving the levelling up, which the Government claim is an objective, is by reference to the minimum standards set by the ILO. There can be no rational objection to reliance on these standards, since they have long been ratified by the United Kingdom. Indeed, under EU law for many years, states have been required to ensure the observance of ILO standards by public contractors. Article 18, paragraph 2 of the EU directive on public procurement of 2014 requires states to take measures to ensure
“that in the performance of public contracts economic operators comply with applicable obligations in the fields of environmental, social and labour law”
including the provisions listed in Annex X to that directive. In that list are the core ILO conventions, all of which have been ratified by the United Kingdom. That is not inconsistent with the revised GPA.
Amendment 5 is modest indeed, and requires no more than that the envisaged regulations should not undermine what the current law requires. I hope that the Government will accept this amendment.