My Lords, I am glad to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington. I signed her Amendment 42 and I thoroughly agree with it. Indeed, I agree with all the points she made, including—I am grateful to her for saying it—the importance of focusing on the national procurement policy statement. In a sense, while it would be helpful for Clause 11 on procurement objectives to clarify what is meant by “public benefit”, there is always a risk that we either have a broad-ranging—no disrespect to it—but perfectly understandable series of statements, as in Amendment 33 moved by the noble Baroness opposite, or, as with Amendment 42, by narrowing it down, we somehow make people imagine that we have excluded these other terribly important objectives. My noble friend would doubtless say that the more we put into the
procurement objectives, the more difficult it will be for contracting authorities to comply with competing considerations and so on. There is a lack of flexibility in that.
I thoroughly agree, therefore, with the proposition that we need to focus on the national procurement policy statement. The Government will publish that. As we know from other contexts, that is what the contracting authorities are going to look at. We know that the NPPS will include the Government’s strategic priorities, but we do not know what those are. The question then immediately emerges: is it proper for Parliament to have a view about that, or should we just say, “When the time comes, the Government will say what their strategic priorities are, and that’s good enough for us”?
Amendment 47 is limited in precisely the way the noble Baroness who signed the amendment said. It does not tell the Government to have a long list of strategic priorities. They may have their own strategic priorities but, during the Committee debates, noble Lords who were there will recall that there were some clear strategic priorities which the Committee wanted to see reflected in the Government’s statement. They included, perhaps most prominently, the environmental issues. One way of doing it which should cause the Government the least possible vexation is to do it by specific reference to the existing statutory targets set out in the Climate Change Act and the Environment Act—that is, to make it clear that they must ask contracting authorities to do the things that they are statutorily obliged to do in any case. They might say that that is unnecessary: actually it is not, because we all know that when these are reflected properly in the strategic priorities of the NPPS, the authorities will do it. If they are not reflected in the strategic priorities in the NPPS, they might be on statute but the authorities may well not do it. We have to make sure that they do it.
Turning to the second strategic priority in Amendment 47—requirements set out in the Public Services (Social Value) Act—I am glad that my noble friend Lord Maude of Horsham is in his place, because he will know that reflecting the strategic priority on that social value legislation is precisely one of the mechanisms for ensuring that social enterprises are given the priority they deserve. For example—I hesitate, in speaking to my noble friend, to cite this—but the European Commission document Buying for Social Impact, published in 2018, had a range of examples from across Europe, one of which was from Scotland. The Scottish example said that one of the implications of buying for social impact has been the use of not-for-profit and social enterprises in respect of public procurement. It is therefore a very effective way of bringing that to the forefront.
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Thirdly, on promoting innovation among potential suppliers, I say that we have had that debate many times. The word “innovation” does not appear anywhere in the Bill. If we are to have, as I am sure we must, innovation as one of the clear central approaches to public procurement, for the benefit of public services and the economy, it must be reflected in the NPPS. I
have altered the wording “among UK suppliers” because I do not wish it to be thought in any way discriminatory. It must be just “among suppliers”. When our current Prime Minister was Chancellor of the Exchequer, he put innovation at the forefront of his economic approach to improving productivity. Our present Chancellor of the Exchequer did the same in his Autumn Statement just the other week.
Finally, not least because I cannot imagine that a Government would not put it among their strategic priorities in public procurement, reducing fraud, eliminating waste and avoiding abuse of public money must be a strategic priority for every contracting authority. My point here is a bit like our earlier discussion. If not these, what will the Government put as strategic priorities? These must be among them. They are not limited to these, but it would be incredible if the Government did not include these as strategic priorities—and, from my point of view, if they are in the NPPS, they apply to all procurements. The Government can make it very clear in the statement how these are to be translated from priorities to actions by contracting authorities, but we must wait to see that.
I have other amendments which, unlike Amendment 47, I hope that it will not be necessary to press. Although changing “may” to “must” is a classic of its kind in this House, I am pretty sure that the Government have sufficient incentive to publish a statement that they are certain to do so. Amendment 44, about doing so within 12 months, is simply a probing amendment to see whether the Minister will say when the Government intend to publish such a statement—because, in the absence of it, it is very difficult to see how the overall reforms are to be given sufficient implementation.
My noble friend the Minister has listened very carefully and patiently. I have discussed with her how consultation should be on a draft of the statement. There is a risk that it would be consultation simply on a set of questions. When you get close to a statement of this kind, it is important for public bodies and contracting authorities and their representatives to see the terms in which the Government are proposing to lay a statement and to have an opportunity to comment on the terms of the statement. However, it is not necessary to press this into the statute. I just hope that it will be regarded as the best practice on the part of Ministers when the time comes.
I hope that my noble friend can respond positively to the strategic priorities in Amendment 47. I look forward to hearing what she has to say. However, if it is not sufficiently positive, I may need to test the opinion of the House on Amendment 47.