My attitude to this is clear, and I have offered to engage on the subsidiary detail of the transformation that we are planning with the Bill.
I turn to the important matter of the national procurement policy statement, which sets out strategic priorities for procurement. Amendment 43—I hope noble Lords will forgive me if I do not mention their names in relation to every amendment they have tabled—would require the Government to publish a national procurement policy statement, rather than just allowing them to do so. This is the so-called move from “may” to “must”. Amendment 44 then requires a statement to be published within 12 months of the relevant section coming into force.
I think the clause is right as it is. Think of how much more important issues such as supply chain resilience have become since the outbreak of Covid and the conflict in Ukraine. The current approach enables the Government to react nimbly to changes in priority, which my noble friend Lady Noakes thought was important, and they can issue a new statement as appropriate. However, importantly, I can assure noble Lords that this Government will publish such a statement when the Bill takes effect; indeed, they have already done so in draft. The Bill will put the new statement on a statutory footing. Importantly, the clause provides that, once the statement is published, contracting authorities must have regard to it when carrying out their procurement activity. The amendment as drafted requires a Minister to publish a statement. However, a Minister would be unable to fulfil this requirement were Parliament to vote against it, perversely meaning that the amendment would potentially prevent a Minister discharging the statutory duty. I would therefore prefer to avoid the formula proposed in Amendment 43.
Amendment 46 proposes that, prior to publishing a statement, the Minister must give due regard to a number of specified principles, most of which represent elements core to the procurement regime. This is evident from the drafting of the Bill overall: for example, value for money, integrity and maximising public benefit
are set out clearly, and transparency is a specific requirement running throughout the Bill. There is a lot in common here with what I said at the beginning so I will not repeat that.
Amendment 47, tabled by my noble friend Lord Lansley, the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, and the noble Earl, Lord Devon, would require the inclusion of specific priorities in the national procurement policy statement relating to the achievement of targets and requirements set under the Climate Change Act and other legislation, as well as promoting innovation and minimising the incidence of fraud. As discussed in Committee, the range of topics suggested by noble Lords during the process demonstrates that stakeholders have different priorities for procurement. These matters are already well covered in our statute book. It is important that policy priorities are addressed in a targeted way and that our regime does not contribute to a deterioration in productivity. That said, noble Lords will be reassured to know that many of these themes—net zero, social value and innovation—feature in the current non-statutory statement that we have already published.
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Noble Lords have also focused on the scope for increasing innovation and minimising fraud. I hope that, by taking a new approach to small business, we can create a procurement regime that will unleash innovation in the supply chain and build up innovation in this country. On fraud, I agree that recent instances have caused concern, which is why we have a goal to embed transparency throughout the procurement life cycle. I believe this will help to tackle fraud and it has been widely seen as a positive move. However, it would be wrong to tie ourselves down with the NPPS for all the reasons I have stated.
Amendment 45 proposes a public consultation on a draft of the NPPS. I agree that this is in many ways a good idea. We would like to explore what the statement should contain with a wider range of stakeholders across the public sector and elsewhere to ensure that it is as effective as possible. But I worry that consulting on a draft may come too late in the process. It may be best to carry out a consultation on topics to inform the drafting of the statement.
In a similar vein, Amendment 48 would require the publication of a draft statement and moving to an affirmative procedure. I assure the House that the Government are committed to ensuring that any published procurement policy statement is published with the scrutiny of Parliament. The Bill provides for the appropriate process in Clause 12(3) to (6), and noble Lords will be able to pray against the statement or request debates on the NPPS or the issues in it in the usual way. I do not see a strong case to change this procedure, and this was not raised by the DPRRC in its scrutiny of the Bill.
The slightly different Amendments 58 and 82, tabled by my noble friend Lord Lindsay, would stipulate that, where a contracting authority requires a conformity assessment or a certification from a conformity assessment body, this must be from a body accredited by a national accreditation body such as the United Kingdom Accreditation Service—UKAS. I thank my noble friend
Lord Lindsay for the work he has done as chair of UKAS and the motivations behind these amendments. However, certification can be costly for suppliers. At the heart of our Bill is a desire for contracting authorities to act commercially, innovate and support SMEs. We do not think we need legislation to dictate to contracting authorities what conformity assessments or certification standards should be acceptable. It is often important for the procurement that a conformity assessment is done by a certification body such as UKAS. Contracting authorities are able to set this as a condition of participation under Clause 21, so Amendment 58 is not required, and the same logic applies to Amendment 82.
Having said that, I understand that UKAS has helpfully engaged with my officials over concern that the existing text in Clause 53(5) risks suppliers removed from the competition for failure to meet a requisite standard being able to argue, even in the courts, that a lesser standard is an international equivalent and therefore challenge their removal. We are looking into this point and will revert to the matter if the need arises.
Amendment 96, in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, and the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, would require contracting authorities to undertake a public interest test when considering whether to outsource or continue to outsource a public sector service. I do not think that this was raised, but I am happy to write to the noble Lords who tabled the amendment to explain why we feel that the procedures that we are bringing in and our transformational plans should provide the necessary reassurance.
This has been a long debate. I believe that I have made a strong case for keeping the framework of the Bill as it is, but obviously it will also be important that the NPPS contains the right policy provisions. I respectfully request that these various amendments be withdrawn following the reassurances I have been able to give.