Climate Agenda

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Thursday 24th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome this debate, and I congratulate my noble friend Lord Lilley on initiating it. I too welcome my noble friend Lady May of Maidenhead to these Benches and warmly congratulate her on her formidable maiden speech. We entered Parliament together in the other place in 1997, and I served under her leadership in the shadow team for environment, food and rural affairs, so I can vouch that she is well versed in the issues before us today.

Personally, I accept that climate change is real and that we are subject to increasing extreme weather events. I would argue, as my noble friend Lord Ahmad did, that we need a global approach to tackling it, and we need to find international solutions of not just one country acting on its own but to act together with the EU, the US and the BRICS countries, which we saw meeting this week—otherwise, progress will be slow, and it could serve potentially only to penalise our own industry and households. I welcome the reality check by the then Prime Minister, my right honourable friend Rishi Sunak, who in September 2023 undertook a more pragmatic approach.

I would like to speak in particular to the impact of the climate agenda on rural affairs, and I have to say that it is not altogether a positive one. Let me take some examples from the recent Climate Change Committee progress report to Parliament. First, the ending of production of any cars other than electric vehicles by 2030 will be extremely challenging for rural areas. There is a lack of charging points in rural areas, and there is also a lack of range. Apparently, we have gone from charge anxiety to range anxiety. If a car can go only 200 miles maximum, without any heating, radio, windscreen wipers or air conditioning in the summer, we rural dwellers—in either summer or winter—will be lucky if we can go 100 or 150 miles without having to charge again.

Secondly, on the commitment to renewable energy, such energy is often generated on land in the north of England or Scotland, or offshore and brought in to coastal areas. Yet the energy created is transported across rural and coastal areas—away from the very communities that could do with that electricity more than some others—through ugly, intrusive pylons and fed into the national grid. There is a very strong argument for ensuring that, whether it is offshore or onshore wind, the energy generated serves communities close to where it is generated, which is what generally happens in Denmark and other Scandinavian countries. As a result, those rural communities would be more inclined to support this type of rural energy going forward. I fear that if the Government persist with plans to criss-cross the country with even more overhead line transmission pylons, there will be a revolt. The earlier REVOLT—Rural England Versus Overhead Line Transmission—campaign, started by Professor O’Carroll in North Yorkshire, may be dormant but it will be revived if this persists.

Thirdly, the recommendations to ramp up tree planting and peatland restoration both sound like good ideas, but we should be aware that it takes 200 years to create a peat bog. Realistically, while we can bring about modest achievements such as the peat dams we created through the Slow the Flow project to prevent flooding in Pickering and North Yorkshire, it takes 200 years to create a peat bog from scratch. Tree planting in inappropriate areas can in fact be extremely damaging: it can create more floods, rather than prevent them. Also, I firmly believe that trees should not be planted on most fertile, productive farmland.

As the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans set out, farmers have a key role to play in tackling climate change and achieving net zero. They have been the victims, particularly over the past 18 months, of the record rainfall taking large rafts of land out of production. My noble friend Lady May referred to 2023 being the hottest year on record; the last 18 months is the wettest period on record, particularly in England. Farmers would like to become more self-sufficient in energy production but, as I understand it, they are currently prevented from doing so by existing planning rules. The rules should be revisited to ensure that farmers can generate more of the energy they need, as other businesses are doing.

The rural economy provides the food we eat, and farmers are the powerhouse of rural communities. If we have learned anything from the current invasion and hostilities in Ukraine, it is that we need to boost our self-sufficiency in food, not least in fruit and vegetables, which is woeful: we are only 16% self-sufficient in fruit and vegetables. We also need to boost our food security. Food security and energy security are complementary and should go hand in hand.

The climate agenda should work just as well for rural areas as for urban ones. It should not undermine food production, jobs, growth and prosperity in rural communities, as it currently appears to do.

Procurement Act 2023

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Tuesday 15th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

I will look into that matter and write to the noble Lord on that point.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, in their manifesto, the Government committed themselves

“through public sector targets to source locally-produced food”

to help farmers. We on this side would applaud that, but how does the Minister square that with the terms of the Procurement Act, which prevents farmers and others from bidding to be sources of food in schools, prisons and hospitals?

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

I am not aware of any particular measures that would prevent them from doing that, but I will look into that matter and revert to the noble Baroness.

Bus Fares: National Cap

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Monday 7th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)]

I completely agree with my noble friend. There is no point in having a regular train service if passengers cannot reach it by bus. It is always about the consideration of the last mile of a journey. If people get into their cars, they tend to stay there. It is a very important aspect that has been picked up by looking at the bus open data service. Bus companies sharing their data has been an enormous problem—anyone in the north of England knows that that helped prevent us bringing in an Oyster-style ticketing service across the north. It is crucial that we get this right and that all companies are obliged to share the information.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

Could I press the noble Baroness further? She has given a very positive answer on concessionary fares for the elderly, but her response does not actually give a commitment to continue the £2 fare. Could she give a more positive answer about the timetable and an assurance that there will be no cliff edge from 31 December this year, particularly for young people and those living in rural areas who do not benefit from the concessionary fare, which has played such a positive role in rural transport?

[Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)]

I hope I made it clear that the success of the scheme is well recognised. We have to look at all aspects to make sure that it is sustainable going forward and that we do not have to return to this in the future. So many people depend on this and it is very popular. Of all the schemes that have come into place, this one is very well known; the public actually know about it and this has led to an increase in patronage. People have changed their habits from using other forms of transport to using the bus. In my view, it has been a real success.

Afghan Resettlement Update

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Thursday 30th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

Could I address, in particular, the aspect my noble friend touched on about alternative accommodation? Is the accommodation for Afghans going to be extended to other asylum seekers and refugees rather than the use of former military accommodation? The reason I ask is that the Government abandoned the scheme that was proposed at the former RAF base in Linton-on-Ouse for the simple reason that the population of only 700 people in the village was going to be dwarfed by double that amount—1,500 male refugees—being placed there. When will the Government be in a position to give more detail? I am familiar with the site proposed in Essex, as it used to be in my European constituency, but it is a similar arrangement there. It is a small village of only 1,200 residents. Is it appropriate to put families, or maybe in the worst-case scenario only male refugees, there? When will we have more details of the arrangements?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I am sure my noble friend will correct me if I am wrong, but I think she is asking a follow-up question to the Statement made in the other place yesterday by my right honourable friend the Minister for Immigration. This is a separate issue. There was a lively debate in the other place that was extensively reported in Hansard. I refer her to the answers given by my right honourable friend Mr Jenrick.

Procurement Bill [HL]

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

3rd reading
Tuesday 13th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I have something to add before the thanks are completed. The Minister was good enough to express her thanks to the Cross Benches, and I draw the attention of the House to the all-party amendments which were included in the Bill. I begin by thanking her. As the noble Lord, Lord Fox, just said, it was unusual for a poacher to be turned gamekeeper in the course of the proceedings of the Bill and she did it with great aplomb and showed all the characteristics that we have come to associate with her, in the way that she dealt with constructive attempts to improve the Bill as it proceeded through Committee and Report.

As the noble Lord, Lord Fox, said, the Bill has enjoyed support from around the entire House and, of course, whatever form a Bill is in, we will all always want to try to add to it, if we are able to do so. I was therefore very grateful to the House for including the cross-party amendment I moved on the removal of surveillance equipment. I also supported the all-party amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, who is here, on the use of forced organ harvesting. Those two amendments are now in the Bill as it goes to another place. Unlike on ping-pong, this is a pristine Bill going to the other place. I hope that Ministers will engage with those amendments and not simply try to remove them.

There were two other amendments. The Minister will recall that the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, moved an all-party amendment which was not taken to a vote. We had a discussion during Report about how that could be taken to the Minister who might deal with the Bill when it reached the House of Commons. I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, will be able to draw that to the attention of the House of Commons Minister and suggest that such a meeting should now take place.

With those remarks, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Fox, and his noble friends, but also the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, and her noble friends—the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, in particular—and those on the Cross Benches who supported the amendments that we brought forward.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I think I am the sole surviving Member of the Committee here today who contributed. I congratulate my noble friend the Minister and the Bill team on getting the Bill thus far. I am obviously immensely disappointed not to have succeeded in my attempt to source more local food in our procurement contracts, but I hope that this can be redressed in the other place.

My noble friend alluded to something that is a source of great concern to me. I have in my possession the memorandum from the Scottish Government, which expressed their concern and inability to add their consent to the Bill. Does she not share my concern that it would be very regrettable if the Scottish Government felt obliged to carry out their own Bill in this area, because of their concern about the continued ability to carry out cross-border procurement? Could this still be addressed in the other place before the Bill reaches Royal Assent?

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, I am sure that noble Lords will be very surprised to know that I thank my noble friend Lord Coaker for supporting me and sticking with the Bill all the way through. It has been a long haul, and I think we are all pleased we are at Third Reading.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord True. At the beginning of the Bill, he gave me an awful lot of time, as did his officials, when we had some serious concerns. As the noble Lord, Lord Fox, mentioned, we had a bit of a sticky start. The officials worked incredibly hard to get us to a position where we could properly debate the issues in Committee; at the beginning, we were not in that position, unfortunately. We all congratulated the noble Lord, Lord True, on his promotion, but we were also delighted as a Committee when the noble Baroness took over this Bill, because she was genuinely interested in what we were debating and genuinely understood what we were trying to achieve. I think she worked very hard and brought in some important improvements to the Bill, having listened to Committee. I thank her for her time, efforts and energy in helping us all to come out with a Bill that was better than what we had at the start.

I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Fox, and other Members who took part for the constructive work we did going forward on the Bill. It is much appreciated. I think all Members of the Committee would agree that the Bill we have sent to the other place is in a much better state than it was when we received it. I thank everybody very much for their hard work. I hope the other place considers our amendments seriously—I think they make the Bill better—and perhaps brings some further improvements that we can look at when it arrives back. It has been a pleasure to work on the Bill, but I am pleased we are now moving on.

Procurement Bill [HL]

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 28th November 2022 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering]

37: Clause 11, page 8, line 38, at end insert—
“(e) in relation to the procurement of food and drink, achieving a target of procuring 50% of products and ingredients locally.”

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, it gives me pleasure to speak to Amendments 37 and 53 in this group. Before I address them, I associate myself with government Amendment 57, on the needs of SMEs. I am grateful to my noble friend the Minister for meeting me last week to discuss these issues. I am also grateful that she listened in Committee; that is why we see government Amendment 57 in this group.

Before I address Amendments 37 and 53, which raise farming issues, I pay tribute to the late Lord Plumb of Coleshill, whose memorial service was held today. He was a great British patriot and a lifelong European who lived all his life to promote farming at every level and in every position he held. He will be much missed.

Amendment 37 seeks to address an issue that a number of us tried to raise. I recall an amendment I tabled when the Trade Act was going through Parliament, both in Committee and on Report, in which I tried to write into the Bill that, now we had left the European Union, we were told that there would be a great Brexit dividend allowing us to open up public procurement—particularly at local authority level for our schools, hospitals, prisons and defence establishment—and allowing much more locally produced food to be taken at that level. So a number of us, myself in particular, were extremely disappointed to learn that, although we were leaving the European Union and the threshold of €136,000—up until which, I presume, locally produced food could be sourced for local authorities and local establishments—we were nevertheless still bound by the global procurement agreement, which, curiously, comes in at about the same level, $135,000. So in fact, there is no flexibility at all, and a number of us feel disappointed and that we were perhaps misled.

Amendment 37 seeks to add to Clause 11 the procurement objective of,

“in relation to the procurement of food and drink, achieving a target of procuring 50% of products and ingredients locally.”

Furthermore, Amendment 53 follows directly from the conversation I had with my noble friend last week. In it, I try to set down what locally sourced food would be:

“(1) Any public contracting authority catering services must take responsible steps to ensure that at least 50 per cent of food and drink is procured locally.


(2) For the purposes of this Part, “locally” refers to products that have been grown, raised or made within 30 miles of the point of provision, or in the same county.”


Noble Lords who followed the leadership contest closely may remember that we found a great advocate in none other than my right honourable friend the Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, who committed to these two provisions and expressed the distinct desire that they be enshrined in law. I am very grateful to him that there is an opportunity in the Bill to have this written into legislation. I quote from the letter he wrote at the time, as a leadership candidate, to the NFU:

“As you know, I represent a large number of farmers in my own constituency. I know that times are tough at the moment; the rise in global gas prices has led to a dramatic increase in input costs including manufactured fertiliser, livestock feed, fuel and energy. I want to help; I hope that by bringing forward 50% of the BPS payment we have given farmers some confidence, but I am very willing to listen if there are other measures that we should be taking.”


He went on to say:

“I will also introduce a new target for public sector organisations to buy 50% of their food locally, to back British farmers and improve sustainability.”


In my right honourable friend’s constituency is probably the largest garrison in the country, at Catterick barracks. I had the good fortune to represent the neighbouring seat—originally, the Vale of York and then Thirsk and Malton. I can testify to the number of defence establishments there and the large number of rural schools in that constituency. There was a large prison in York, and other public procurement establishments that would benefit from this provision.

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I am sorry to end on that slightly negative note; I feel that this has been a very useful debate. I look forward to the House’s support for the government amendments, and I respectfully suggest that noble Lords do not press their amendments.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

I am extremely grateful, particularly to the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, for saying that the way forward is obviously to procure more food locally, and to my noble friend for pointing out that Section 17 of the Local Government Act will in fact be lifted. That is good news. It is pleasing to see that her work has formed a coalition of support for Amendment 40, and I congratulate her on that. I am not suggesting that olives should be grown in this country any time soon, but she will probably be aware that we are only 16% self-sufficient in fruit and vegetables in this country. It is wrong that we should be so dependent on foreign imports. It is a matter of personal regret to me that the scheme that was intended to bring Ukrainian women in to pick fruit and vegetables this year never appeared to come into force, so I hope we can look at that in future years. With those few remarks and the assurances she has given, I beg leave to withdraw Amendment 37.

Amendment 37 withdrawn.

Procurement Bill [HL]

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 26th October 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

My Lords, as I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted by the Division Bell, the concept of Amendment 272 is to ensure that the KPIs support in more detail the public benefit test. There will be economic, social and environmental factors that provide sustainable local improvement. The reason for this is that many times when a provider goes in and provides a service—I speak as a former leader of a council and I have seen it in some of the work I do in public sector reform—the public good that happens, whether it be social or environmental, lasts only while that provider is there: that is, the jobs are dependent on that provider providing that service, or are adjacent to or an adjunct to the work it is providing. This amendment tries to ensure that when public sector contracting authorities are writing their KPIs, they have a view that they should be economic, social or environmental but also sustainable—that is, when the contract ends or the contractor leaves, the things it has put in place are sustainable, rather than being for just a limited period. That is reason behind Amendment 272.

I shall take a little time to speak to Amendment 353AA in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, to which my noble friend Lord Fox has added his name, which is about the public sector interest test being applied when a service is at present provided by a public sector body and is being outsourced. I want to be clear that this amendment does not stop outsourcing. I do not subscribe to the view that public is good and private is bad, or vice versa. In a mixed market you can get good and bad in both providers. This amendment stops the sometimes very narrow view of public sector contracting authorities that they will outsource without thinking about the wider implications for citizens and the economy of the area.

Let us look at some of the issues in this amendment. Paragraph (c) of subsection (2) of the proposed new clause refers to

“implications for other public services and public sector budgets”.

I have seen outsourcing in social services that has no assessment of what it will mean for working with the NHS. A contract that is purely for one part of what the citizen goes through could fragment the citizen journey or the service.

The other issue is the effect on employment conditions. If, for example, the contract is on lowest price, particularly in a deprived area, it could have the disastrous result, which I have seen, of reducing wage rates, which works against the wider public benefit of increasing prosperity and having better jobs in the area.

While the amendment would not preclude outsourcing, it is important for the wider public benefit test and for ensuring that services, which in many cases join up with another part of the organisation or a different organisation, think through the implications for that service and the citizen’s journey through the service being provided, whether by a public provider or private provider, if part of it is going to be outsourced. I therefore commend this amendment, which, if accepted, would not preclude outsourcing. It would simply get public sector bodies to think more widely about why outsourcing needs to take place.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, Amendments 370ZA and 370ZB are tabled my name and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, and the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, for their support which is much appreciated.

The thinking behind these amendments relates to the plight of the wholesale sector, which supplies food and drink to critical public service infrastructure on which we all depend, including schools, hospitals and care homes. According to the briefing I have received from the Federation of Wholesale Distributors, wholesalers are struggling to fulfil these contracts due to unfavourable contractual terms, which are resulting in these businesses making significant losses. That does not bode well for the future viability of the sector. They are facing rising costs and food inflation, which we know has hit 15.1% as of August 2022— this week it looked as though it could be higher still. It leaves the wholesalers unable to negotiate any price increases; or the smaller price increases they have negotiated on certain contracts have been well below inflation. This is an unsustainable circumstance going forward.

Given the situation where price reviews occur only every six months or, in some cases, only once a year, this gives wholesalers very little room for manoeuvre to negotiate price increases. This means that wholesalers are not making a profit on the product and service they provide to their customers. This is affecting the quality of the products they are able to serve to children and the most vulnerable, and the viability of providing catering services in the long term. They would argue that the quality of catering services is of paramount importance, as we have seen with Jamie Oliver’s campaign in hospitals and during the pandemic.

I support the fact that the Government’s food strategy is seeking to drive up standards of public sector food by requiring caterers to use more organic and locally sourced foods. This is not sustainable, however, without funding that matches inflation—it is just not viable going forward. In the federation’s view, small and medium-sized enterprises will be the most affected of all businesses. Without quarterly price reviews, the trend will continue towards market consolidation and homogenisation, driving standardisation not the localisation of publicly produced foods.

I expressed my disappointment previously that the public procurement contracts we signed up to under the European Union conditions have been replaced by the GPA; this is something we need to look at on an ongoing basis. Of course, it is right that the Procurement Bill aims effectively to open up public procurement to new entrants such as small businesses and social enterprises, so that they can compete for and win more public contracts. It is just the case that SMEs are more acutely affected by price increases. They are smaller in scale, less resilient and need to pass the increases on in real time. They do not have the capacity to absorb those increases and, as such, are more vulnerable to these pressures if price increases are not passed on. We can therefore envisage a situation where SMEs are either closing down or being sold to larger national conglomerates. If these conditions continue, the sector believes that this will undo competition and the diverse market that brings a number of benefits to the public sector.

To ensure that the targets in the Procurement Bill are met, to encourage more SMEs to supply contracts and to ensure the continued supply of public sector food—which I think the Committee would sign up to—I ask my noble friend the Minister to consider publishing guidance to instate quarterly price reviews to allow contract price increases more regularly than once a year or every six months, and only if a certain threshold is met—for example, inflation over 5%. This is what I have set out in Amendment 370ZA to Clause 69 and in Amendment 370B to Schedule 8, regarding a review when inflation is 5% or more.

The quarterly price reviews would allow contract price increases more regularly, as I have stated, than either once a year or once every six months, if the threshold is met. I propose that that threshold should be over 5%. I remind the Committee that we have seen record increases in the price of staple goods such as milk, dairy, bread and even pasta, and some of the cheaper products that these public sector wholesalers would seek to provide in the context of the contracts we are discussing this afternoon.

I put on record that public sector caterers are struggling to meet the food standards, being forced to reduce portion sizes and using less UK-grown and produced product, which is against both my better judgment and the Government’s aims. I would like to see the quality of the food used to service public sector contracts improve, under the amendments I have spoken to. Without these amendments, standards will continue to decline to mitigate the rising costs if the Government do not step in to support the industry. A number of wholesalers rely on profitable contracts subsidising loss-making contracts at the moment. However, with the ever-decreasing level of profitable contracts, the balance is tipping towards overall loss-making, which is unsustainable in the long term.

Other advantages of these amendments are that they would enable meeting the government targets which would otherwise not be met in the current climate, and would enable those in this sector to bid for more contracts, which would impact the supply of food and drink to public service infrastructure. Some 95% of wholesalers have said that the current climate and rising costs mean they are unlikely to bid for new contracts, especially ones with unfavourable terms, such as the long pricing review.

I ask my noble friend to respond to these issues to help SMEs and secure more bids for future contracts, in particular by a three-monthly review and a 5% review of inflation. The level of food inflation is pushing up the level of inflation across the piece. We are woefully short on food self-sufficiency, particularly fruit and vegetables. I hold the Minister’s feet to the fire, because we heard from her colleague the Minister for Agriculture in this place, my noble friend Lord Benyon, that the Government are seeking to do something to help produce more fruit and vegetables locally, even to increase production such that we can export. Nowhere is that more important than in the delivery of public sector contracts.

I really regret that we are going backwards, having left the European Union, and are relying on more imported and more expensive food. We should be sourcing more food, whether it is meat, bread or dairy—milk and butter—as all these staples have been hugely impacted by inflation. I urge my noble friend to look favourably on these two amendments.

[Lord Mendelsohn (Lab)]

My Lords, this is my first opportunity to welcome the Minister back to her place and to say what a pleasure it is to see her here. We who have experienced time with her have always been impressed by her courtesy and the seriousness with which she takes these deliberations. I am returning to a theme we first discussed during the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill in 2014. As they say, some songs are so good, they may be old but are worth repeating. I hope she will forgive me for coming back to some of the issues we had then, of which, during her time on the Back Benches, she has been a doughty supporter. I am conscious that there is an awful lot to respond to in this group of varying themes. I look forward to seeing her do so with aplomb.

When I saw the amendments tabled here, I had a moment of undiluted joy when I noticed that Amendment 356A in my name suddenly had the addition of “g” before it. I initially thought that, in the chaos of the last few months, I had been called into government service unbeknown to me and without the benefit of a phone call. Having realised that that was probably not the case, I then thought that I had won the lottery—that, for once, one of my amendments was so good that the Government had finally adopted it and were prepared to champion it. Of course, it is a printing error.

I return to some of the things we talked about before, such as how we can align this Bill with the Prompt Payment Code and the Late Payment of Commercial Debts Regulations, for example. Genuine progress has been made in trying to deal with the curse of late payments, which affects small, medium and even large businesses, to try to improve their payment terms and to make sure that the Government play their part where they can, both as an agency of regulation and a procurer.

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[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for her intervention. I agree that we need to try to get at the issue of the balance of power; indeed, we were discussing it at my briefing meeting. I think it may be worth having a further discussion with the Government Office for Technology Transfer, because it needs to understand the importance of these small companies to innovation and how the kinds of decisions that they make on rights and intellectual property can make an important difference. I am grateful to her for raising that further point.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

I listened very carefully to what the Minister said to our noble friend and to her response to my two little amendments. I am struggling to understand how she believes that Amendments 370ZA and 370B would transfer cost to the public sector. I know from her time on the Back Benches how much my noble friend likes impact assessments, so I refer to page 44 of the impact assessment, which states strongly that this is to encourage SMEs. I hoped that I had made the case—as did a number of others, including my noble friend Lady Noakes—for how SMEs should be benefiting from this, but, in two specific areas that I set out, SMEs are actually being handicapped by the current provisions under the Bill.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I will certainly look carefully at Hansard. I think my noble friend was basically talking about an inflation adjustment.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

Five per cent, plus the three-month review.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

And a three-month review. The point about inflation is that if you build it in—this is a wider economic point—and then it goes up further, you can get an inflationary spiral. We have to try to find a way for people to come together and think about how we can best handle that, and I think the current system does that well. That is certainly my own experience, having been involved in procurement on both sides of the divide.

You can write in three-monthly reviews, but the difficulty is that this is an all-embracing Act and putting that into the Bill could lead to a lot of extra meetings and reviews that might not fit in with simplicity. But obviously this is Committee and we will be reflecting further on the right thing to do. I thank my noble friend for, as always, pursuing her point with such clarity and doggedness.

Finally, this is not in my script but I would like to confirm that I and the team are looking back at the undertakings made on earlier days in Committee to make sure that balls are not dropped. I confirm that we will be arranging meetings on the SME angle, even though I am not able to champion them. I have already had a round table with SMEs and the official team to see what can be done. I do not want to overpromise, but we want to do our best. I respectfully request that the various non-government amendments be respectively withdrawn or not moved.

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[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

My Lords, I support the noble Lord’s endeavours. He and I have debated with Ministers on many occasions the interaction between the CRaG process, our international negotiations and the regrettable times when there has been, to some extent, circumvention of that approach. Therefore, I am glad he has put forward his amendment to seek clarification, as he outlined.

I have Amendment 441 in this group, which is a probing amendment to test a little further the Government’s thinking about the interaction with treaty state suppliers. It is my understanding that the countries in the schedule are only those with which we have an agreement where there is a procurement chapter or some procurement elements. It has not entirely been spelt out; I will be grateful if the Minister can confirm that this is the case.

When I looked through those countries, I noticed that there is not a single country from Africa in any of these arrangements. It may be that none of the EPAs we have rolled over have procurement chapters. The noble Lord, Lord Lansley, asked a question, and I ask the Minister whether that is the case. For example, in the SADC agreement, we have a chapter for co-operation which may lead to formal procurement agreements. I will be grateful if the Minister can simply clarify the reasons why those countries are in Schedule 9 and others were left out. It may lead to a couple of jarring interactions on the approach, but I am sure the Minister will be able to clarify that point.

My second question relates to our debates on the interaction between the UK system now, including guidance, and treaty state supplying nations. In a debate on Monday, I asked questions relating to exclusions. For example, on human trafficking and slave labour, why is it only a discretionary ground if a supplier would have met a threshold of having a prevention order, whereas if they had met the threshold of a conviction, it would be a mandatory exclusion ground? We in the All-Party Group on Human Trafficking and Modern Slavey have lobbied hard to ensure that, where there are serious allegations of modern slavery, forced labour or human trafficking, there are mechanisms that UK purchasing bodies and supply chains can automatically trigger. This could bring in some grey areas. I do not believe that is the Government’s intention, but it could be an unintended consequence, especially when it comes to very large frameworks and supply chains within those countries.

I will give an example regarding one of the countries in this list, Colombia. We have debated the human rights situation in Colombia with regard to the agreement we have signed. The EU paused the agreement, but the UK did not. There are very few mechanisms in this Bill where we can use the rest of the text of the Colombia agreement on human rights as a triggering mechanism when we procure from organisations or state enterprises in Colombia.

This is just my ignorance, so the Minister might be able to clarify this: are state-owned enterprises in treaty state countries treated the same as private sector companies? I assume they would be, but it opens up a different area of concern for me.

The second linked area is on human rights elements. We have an agreement, and are looking for future agreements, with Israel. The Minister will know that, under the European agreement that we have rolled over, there had been a clear dividing line when it came to the illegal occupation of Palestine. As I understand the Bill, when it comes to technology companies or other companies, it will be very hard for contracting bodies in the UK to consider whether services provided will meet the equivalent criteria for goods imports for those within the Occupied Territories. I would be happy if the Minister would write to me on that specifically, rather than give me a response at this moment.

There is a wider concern regarding this Bill when it comes to how a contracting authority would consider fair competition in procurement. On the Australia agreement, we debated whether produce that came from Australia that was manufactured or reared in different ways and on industrial scales provided unfair competition for UK suppliers. Australia also uses pesticides that are banned in the UK. There is an interesting clause in the Australia agreement that allows for those contracting bodies to

“take into account environmental, social and labour considerations throughout the procurement procedure”.

My amendment lifts text from the Australia agreement and suggests that this should be uniform across all agreements, if that is what the Government consider a gold-standard agreement, as they told us it was. The Australia agreement is broadly in line with what we inherited in the European directive, which had the requirement to take into account social criteria and environmental and labour factors. We have adopted that for the TCA, but it is absent for other treaty state suppliers.

For example, our agreement with Japan has no social or labour considerations in the procurement chapter in Article 10.9. I do not know why—that is a separate issue; we have debated the Japan agreement—but I have not been able to find any consistency in any of the treaty state suppliers. I understand that this Bill will then provide that consistency, and it will either be above or below treaty obligations, which I find curious. For example, unless my amendment is accepted by the Government and the Bill is changed, our legal requirements will be less than our treaty obligations in our Australia agreement. I do not know how that is going to operate when it comes to legal challenges.

It is also potentially the case that there will be inconsistency in application. I simply do not know how contracting bodies are going to navigate their way around this, especially as the Minister says so much is going to rely on guidance. In many of the areas, when it comes to the previous group that we were debating on conflict of interest and on other requirements in the Bill, a contracting authority will have to satisfy itself that the treaty supplier meets all of the criteria in this Bill. I do not know how it will do that when it comes to taking into consideration the other ethical factors or conflicts of interest—what are they going to ask a treaty supplier from Colombia, for example, unless there is some stronger mechanism?

The Minister might also help me with something that has been puzzling me. I do not know why, when it comes to operating no discrimination in relation to treaty state suppliers, that does not apply to Scotland. For Scotland, the Bill provides only that there “may” be regulations which mean that there cannot be discrimination. With the Government’s amendment requiring consistency with the United Kingdom Internal Market Act, which means that there cannot be any internal discrimination, I do not how that is going to interact. The Bill currently allows Scottish Ministers, for example, to say that they will be able to discriminate against certain treaty state suppliers on the basis, perhaps, of the overall human rights record of that treaty state—of which Colombia or Israel may be an example. I do not know, so I am hoping that the Minister might be able to help me with that.

Finally, I am not sure how investigations will be carried out when it comes to treaty state suppliers. Of all the areas we discussed previously regarding the grounds for the investigations by the PRU, which the Minister said will be a non-statutory element that will pursue these, I do not know what powers the PRU will have to secure information from treaty state suppliers. There is no mechanism under this Bill, and unless the provision of information is provided for, as happened in the Australia agreement, I do not know how the PRU will get that information. On all those areas, I hope the Minister will be able to reassure me, because at the moment I am fearful that there is a rather high level of opaqueness.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 443A, in my name, to Clause 83. The amendment is, very simply, to leave out

“A Minister of the Crown”,


and its purpose is to remove the power from Ministers of the Crown to make regulations under Clause 83. It may be the case, because this relates especially to the situation in Scotland, that my noble friend the Minister is not able to reply this evening, so I would be very grateful if she could write to me, and I can then share that with the Law Society of Scotland, which has raised this matter with me.

Negotiating Objectives for a Free Trade Agreement with India

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Tuesday 6th September 2022 Grand Committee

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, this has been an excellent debate. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, both on securing the debate and on the excellent report that has formed the basis of it.

One omission in the agreement that I was slightly surprised by—perhaps I have missed it—is to do with commercial aviation aircraft. The leisure sector is one out of which the UK would stand to do extremely well. It seems slightly odd that, as an area that might be very much in the interests of the UK, it is not on the table. I would be interested to hear where we are in that regard.

I fear that this agreement generally falls into the basket of the other agreements that we have debated in this very Room before, where there is a certain lack of symmetry in what the agreement proposes to do for the two parties. To me, that is a matter of great regret. This was an opportunity where we could be seen to remove the barriers—and not just tariff barriers, as one of my noble friends said. As my noble friend Lord Caithness said so eloquently, it is the non-tariff barriers in these free trade agreements that often lie at the root of the problem.

I want to give a couple of examples in this regard, if I may. This issue was picked up by my noble friend Lord Udny-Lister, who was of course not privy to our long debates on both the Trade Act and the internal market Act, as they now are. We want to see opportunities. I declare my interest as a non-practising Scottish advocate; I had wonderful opportunities to work in the European Union and have, I hope, benefited from that in my work in this House. It is interesting to note that paragraph 51 of the report clearly states that

“the Law Society of Scotland called for changes to the Indian visa system to open up the Indian market for legal services and stated that an FTA should build on mobility commitments made by India under the ASEAN-India FTA.”

I would very much like to know what the Government’s response to that is. My noble friend the Minister will remember those debates because he was privy to them and sat patiently through them. Having had the door to the European Union closed in many respects, there is potentially an opportunity here for legal practitioners on both sides of the border between Scotland and England to benefit. What was concluded in the committee’s report is very powerful.

I was taken by what the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, said at the outset: that the test will be whether it is easier to do business with India afterwards. Again, I would like to see that on the basis of reciprocity, which brings me to my key point. The NFU is on the record as saying as far back as January this year that a trade deal with India

“could offer huge opportunities for UK farmers to export more quality UK food abroad”.

In its view, however, it is absolutely “vital” that any deals maintain the

“principles of high animal welfare and environmental protection and ensure these are upheld for imports too.”

I was slightly concerned by my noble friend Lord Frost’s comments. I may have misheard him but I think he said “even if it makes life tougher for existing businesses”. I welcome him to this place with open arms but I sometimes think that it would have done him enormous good to have gone out there, fought an election campaign and found out what is acceptable on the doorstep and what is not. In the last election, under the outgoing Prime Minister, what was acceptable on the doorstep was that we would have the highest possible animal welfare and environmental standards in our food production. To me, the corollary of that is what is good enough for producers in this country. A million people signed the petition organised by, I think, the NFU. What is good for home production and what consumers want to see in this country is our imports also meeting those highest possible standards.

I know it is of concern to other noble Lords, such as my noble friend Lord Caithness—I think the noble Viscount, Lord Waverley, referred to this as well—that pesticides which are not legal for production in this country are widely used in India. I have no doubt that the concerns expressed to the committee by the Welsh and Scottish Governments will be heard, but I would like to hear from my noble friend the Minister in his summing up how their concerns will be acted upon.

In conclusion, I want to draw attention to the aspects of the report which relate to the complex sanitary and phytosanitary rules which India applies to imports. Witnesses told the committee that these act as a trade barrier. The British Standards Institution went on to say that

“only 30% of Indian standards were harmonised with international standards and regulations … traditionally used by the Indian government … favour domestic producers and self-sufficiency”,

and argued against

“recognising Indian goods standards as equivalent or compliant.”

That lies at the core of my concerns. If we have achieved excellent production at very high expense in this country, we must not undercut our farmers in that regard.

I pay tribute to the committee for the work it has done, particularly on the aspects I have referred to relating to more lawyers having access to India and more food from this country going to India, but also ensuring that all Indian food and produce which comes into this country, of whatever kind, meets the highest standards that we exact here. I hope my noble friend will respond to the concerns raised by me, the NFU and the Scottish and Welsh Governments in this regard.

Heatwave Response

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Thursday 21st July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I very much regret that, although I wrote to the noble Baroness opposite about the resilience forums and funding, which is embedded and due to continue, I did not reply on the question that the noble Lord has asked and has asked again. That is a deep fault within me; I apologise to him and to the House, and I shall come back with an answer on the point that he asked about. I hope that he will pardon me for a day or two, until I get that information to him.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I support entirely what the right reverend Prelate said with regard to farming and livestock, given the extreme conditions this week. The last time we had a drought and appointed a Drought Minister, it was followed by significant floods. Will my noble friend support the idea of considering a national grid for water, like the regional grid set up by Yorkshire Water in the whole Yorkshire region, which is able to feed water through pumps and pipes to those areas where there is water stress or shortage? That would enable areas of the UK which suffer water stress, such as East Anglia and the south-east of England, to benefit in this way in future years, if this is going to be a regular occurrence.

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, again, I am tempted to speak outside my brief. Perhaps I could express a personal response: the water that

“droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven”

is a precious resource given to us and to people in every nation, and we have the duty to do the best that we conceivably can to preserve that precious resource in our own nation, as well as an enormous responsibility to bring the gift of clean water to every person and nation of the world.

Procurement Bill [HL]

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 18th July 2022 Grand Committee

Tabled by

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering]

124A: Clause 22, page 15, line 18, at end insert—
“(ba) take account of the environmental impact of the award,”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment requires a contracting authority to be satisfied that the award criteria take account of environmental impact.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, although I am not moving Amendment 124A, I just thank the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, for speaking to the amendment in my absence.

Amendment 124A not moved.