My Lords, I have two amendments in this group. In the absence of the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, I rise to introduce Amendments 65 and 546.
This is an important group of amendments. Although contracting authorities may never bother to read a Bill that we have debated for hours, all of them must have regard to the NPPS, so what is in that document is really important. The amendments in this group look at two particular areas. One is what is put in the Bill about the strategic priorities. The second is the process for parliamentary scrutiny to bring that into being.
Amendments 65 and 546, in my name and the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Worthington, Lady Verma and Lady Young of Old Scone, so they are cross-party amendments, are intended to tease out the strategic priorities that the Government allude to in the opening sentence of the NPPS, as stated in the Bill, because it does not put anything in the Bill.
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The noble Lord, Lord True, has been holding us off with the promise that he was not going to put anything in the Bill when it talks about procurement objectives, but of course we are coming on to talk about the NPPS. This is his chance to put down on the face of the Bill what some of those strategic priorities are—to actually state on it what matters the NPPS will cover. It will come as no surprise to him or to colleagues that the issues that the four of us think must be on the face of the Bill pertain to the need to meet net zero and environmental goals; the amendments clearly state that. Other noble Lords will want to flesh out other areas, but those are the issues that we feel must be in the Bill. If the Government are not prepared to do it on the objectives—it has been made quite clear that they are not—this is the place to do it.
My two amendments, Amendments 74 and 62, are about process. I am not a process person; I did not know much about it until the past six months, when we have had the Environment Act and I have had the privilege of being chair of the Select Committee on the Environment and Climate Change. The now Environment Act was the first skeleton Bill from this Government with the promise of producing an environmental principles policy statement, so in the Chamber we went through what would be the process for ensuring that it came into being. In the then Bill, the Government proposed a draft statement. If it is good enough in the Environment Act to propose a draft statement for the Government to consult on, I do not understand why they have not proposed it in this Bill. If the Minister is not prepared to propose a draft, when he sums up will he say why, given the precedent that they have created by proposing to produce a draft EPPS in the Environment Act, they will not do the same for the NPPS? It is equally significant, arguably even more so. The EPPS was about embedding environmental principles across government; this is about embedding the principles and strategic directions not only across government but across all contracting authorities—it goes wider than just departments. I find this extremely hard. The case that the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, and I have made from both sides of the Chamber about preparing a draft is a strong one.
My next point follows from one made by the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes. This is our chance to ensure adequate parliamentary scrutiny of what will be an incredibly important document. Therefore, with the help of the Public Bill Office, I have gone to the trouble of setting out a process that gives this House the opportunity for adequate scrutiny. I remind colleagues who are not familiar with the processes for a policy statement that it is not like an SI. The Government table it and then there is no guaranteed debate unless somebody determines to pick it up, so it is important
that not only both Houses but Select Committees or Joint Committees get the chance to look at it. I have tried to table a process, mindful of what is in the Government’s own Environment Act, that will give this House adequate scrutiny.
The only change of substance that I have made from the Environment Act is that it, like this Bill, talks about a 40-day period. The evidence from when we tried to do that process for the environmental principles policy statement was that 40 days was not enough. When you take out all the Thursdays and Fridays and try to get the Minister before you, and you want to get stakeholders so that the Select Committees can do an adequate job and inform the House to have a proper debate, you cannot do it in 40 days. I can prove that because, when we could not get it all done on the Environment Act and then have a debate in the House, the Government were good enough to say, “We will extend the period even though the legislation says 40 days. We will allow for the debate to go beyond that, because we accept that it is not sufficient time for adequate scrutiny.” I have picked 60 days. I do not care what you pick, but the evidence is that 40 days was not enough when we tried it on the EPPS.
I will sit down, but this is an important group of amendments. It is about putting in the Bill the strategic priorities of the Government, so that people who read it understand what they are, and having a proper process whereby this Parliament can scrutinise it.