Procurement Bill [HL]

I would like to briefly thank all those who have spoken. I agree with them on almost everything, and I also agree that we should commend my noble friend Lord True, now the Leader of the House, perhaps partly because of his achievements in this area. It has been a great pleasure to become a gamekeeper for the Government rather than be a poacher for the Back Benches. My noble friend Lady McIntosh of Pickering raised the devolved issues; of course, we hope that these things can be amicably resolved in the other place. Procurement is a devolved issue—the Scottish Government have not joined the UK Government’s Bill and will be maintaining their own legislation. Contracting authorities in Scotland will therefore not be bound by the Bill other than to enable their use of frameworks, dynamic markets and joint procurement. They are operating their own regulations, having transposed the EU directives into their own statute book. There are some outstanding issues, particularly with the Scottish Government. We are pursuing those, and I hope they will be resolved before we see the Bill again.