Procurement Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Worthington and Lord Lansley

Report stage
Monday 28th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Worthington (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 42 in my name in this group and in support of Amendments 46 and 47. I will keep my comments brief. We had a very good debate in Committee about what should go into the Bill in relation to the principles that will guide procurement. In my amendment, I sought to be as precise as possible and selected two specific issues relating to climate change and biodiversity loss. The reason for that is that it has been pointed out to me that society’s priorities shift over time and primary legislation should be regarded as very serious: you therefore should not put a long shopping list of things into it. However, on these two issues, I cannot imagine a time henceforth when we will not be concerned about the impacts of climate change or biodiversity loss. The Government have a huge lever for change to drive investments into solutions. It would be a great shame if we were not to make it very clear in the Bill that this lever is something that we are willing and want to use.

The more the public purse can create markets and drive investment, the more we can rely on the private sector to come forward with innovation. It will bring down the cost over time. If we do not use public procurement, we will be expecting more from our private sector, and it will debatable whether it will be able to enter into markets that are highly mature and overcapitalised. We are not talking about a level playing field here. If you want private solutions to come in, you have to support them either through government policy, through taxation or through procurement. This Bill is a huge lever that I hope we will pull.

Although I would be delighted to test the will of the House of Amendment 42, it is actually more important that we put these principles in on the operational aspects of this Bill, in which case Amendments 46 and 47, which relate to national policy planning guidance, are hugely important, and I support both of those amendments. I look forward to hearing those who speak to them and to the Government’s response.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

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.

Fisheries Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Worthington and Lord Lansley

Committee stage & Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard - continued) & Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Monday 9th March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I apologise for my late arrival at the Committee. I believe my noble friend Lady McIntosh very ably excused me for being late and introduced the amendment in an earlier group—for which I am grateful. I was at a memorial service for a good friend, Professor Ian Calder, who was not only a distinguished forensic pathologist but also a great pleasure to be around.

Noble Lords who have put forward amendments in this group have got to the heart of the issue. I will particularly pick up from the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington. One of the central processes following any international negotiations is the determination of fishing opportunities and their allocation. However, we suddenly lapse into a reference to Article 17 of the common fisheries policy. I thought we were escaping from that and setting out for ourselves.

Indeed, the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, does us a service in her amendment by reminding us what is in the second sentence of Article 17, which otherwise is not referred to in the Bill. It would not have been onerous on the Government’s part for Clause 25 to replace Article 17. Then we could have seen the Government’s intentions. I am looking for the Bill to be very clear about the sequencing and the processes. If I understand correctly, and I may entirely be wrong because I think the Bill does not tell me, under Clause 23 the Government will make a determination following international obligations and must consult the devolved authorities, as Clause 24 tells us. Therefore, by extension, I assume, although it does not say so, that the determination under Clause 23 will include the allocation of fishing opportunities between the national fisheries authorities of the United Kingdom. Is that the case?

That having happened, Clause 25 then says by what process the national fisheries authorities should distribute those fishing opportunities. I gently say to the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, that I think there is a problem with Amendment 105 because although it refers to the United Kingdom allocating fishing opportunities between relevant national authorities and using transparent and objective criteria for that purpose, it does not remove Article 17 and, subsequently, refers to “English” fishing opportunities and “English” fisheries authorities. Unless I am very much mistaken, we are legislating here not only for England but on behalf of national fisheries authorities across the United Kingdom. Therefore, Clause 25 must say how the national fisheries authorities in the other parts of the United Kingdom should allocate their fishing opportunities. We need to know whether they have criteria distinct and different from those that will be applied by the English authorities. As drafted, I think they can use different criteria and the joint fisheries statements are likely to reflect different criteria where those apply.

[Baroness Worthington]

I just want to clarify things. We see the need for two tiers of transparent objective criteria: one on the allocation of the pie out to the four devolved nations and then a subsequent set of similarly transparent criteria for the allocation to the English fisheries. I think we get on to that in Clause 27 on fishing opportunities in England. The noble Lord is right that we have to be consistent in the two levels.

[Lord Lansley]

Happily, I think we are in agreement about this. There are two tiers of allocation: the determination of fishing opportunities between the national fisheries authorities and the process by which each national fisheries authority is to do its own task.

That brings me back to the point I was not able to make in a previous group for Amendment 100. However, listening to the bulk of that debate none the less persuaded me that I may, in any case, have directed my amendment at the wrong place and that Clause 25 is where it really matters. This is the point at which if we move away from historic catch levels, for example, things such as the extent to which we do—we may or may not do so, I do not know—immediately become of relevance to the British fishing boats as they are affected by it. For them, that must be the point at which they are consulted. As far as I can tell, Clause 25 and Article 17 which it amends do not say anything about any process of consultation for those affected by the allocation of fishing opportunities. It would be a good idea if they did. None the less, the purport of Amendment 100 is still an argument in relation to Clause 25. I am making the point now, but we may to return to it at a later stage.