Public Procurement (International Trade Agreements) (Amendment) Regulations 2021

Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts

Tuesday 15th June 2021 Grand Committee

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab) [V]]

I thank the Minister for his introduction, but I am afraid the main question I would like to put to him—to which I fear I cannot expect a reply—is whether all those arch- Brexiteers really did all that campaigning just to spend time on a sunny summer afternoon on SIs which simply put in place exactly the same rules that we had before exit day? I do not expect him to answer that.

However, that is what this looks like, as a result of rolling over EU agreements, some large, some small, as the Minister mentioned, with Chile, Switzerland, Israel, the CARIFORUM states, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, central America, Singapore, Korea, Georgia, Kosovo, Ukraine, Japan, North Macedonia, Canada, Mexico, Vietnam, Albania and Serbia—I look forward to the Minister’s response to the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, on that one, given that it does not appear to have gone through CRaG. These regulations simply seem to retain our public procurement rules, in line with those the EU already has with these countries and which therefore applied to us before we left. We are going through all this just to maintain what was there beforehand.

As the Minister said, the Trade Act 2021, which authorises these regulations, covers deals with countries which have trade agreements with the EU—in other words, the ones they are rolling over—so we just continue as before. As he rightly says, we have to agree this to honour the existing deals we have chosen to continue to operate, and to ensure that any UK relevant public authority treats the suppliers of services or economic operators in the countries listed no less favourably than home competitors.

We are where we are, and we are just continuing it. But the interesting question—to which I would prefer an answer over my tease at the start—is that posed by my noble friend Lord Haskel: if, as we keep hearing, the whole point of Brexit was to give us the freedom to sign our own deals, why not add into these a requirement that all public procurement from domestic or overseas suppliers includes sustainability clauses, fairness to SMEs, worker protection and consumer rights?

I do not want the Minister to have given up his nice sunny afternoon in vain, so some thoughts on how the Brexit freedom can be translated into our public procurement would be enlightening. Even as I absolutely signify our acceptance of these uncontroversial regulations, as he called them, it would be interesting to know whether the Government will be a little more ambitious than it appears from this.