Procurement Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Berkeley and Lord Wallace of Saltaire

Committee stage
Wednesday 6th July 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, the previous discussion has demonstrated the active concerns a lot of members of this Committee have that this Bill should not cramp the ability of local authorities to experiment with forms of local procurement, the encouragement of local enterprise, and so on. I had a message from a county council this morning on precisely that point. We are concerned about this. Perhaps there is enough room below the threshold, but we need to explore that a little more.

These amendments respond to the report on the Bill from the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee. Members of that committee are here, so I shall be brief and defer to their expertise.

The Minister will be well aware that many in the Lords are deeply concerned about the Government’s determined move away from clear, detailed legislation towards skeleton Bills and executive discretion. The perhaps soon to depart Prime Minister campaigned to leave the EU on the promise of restoring parliamentary sovereignty but has worked instead to bypass Parliament wherever he can. The Minister for Brexit Opportunities and Government Efficiency, who, as far as I understand it, has some influence over this Bill, is pre-emptively arguing that the Prime Minister was elected by the people and not Parliament, and therefore does not have to go if he loses the confidence of Parliament. We all recognise that both Houses of Parliament are deficient in a number of ways and in need of reform, but, for the moment, we have the constitution that we have inherited, battered though it is, and the spread of Henry VIII powers across legislation is a breach of that constitution, as the DPRRC notes.

Amendment 18 therefore challenges the delegation of power to Ministers to make exempted contracts for the provision of public transport services. Amendment 21 similarly challenges the degree of autonomy given to Ministers in providing concession contracts for air services. Amendment 28, to the schedule on utility contracts, challenges the width of the powers granted to Ministers to make exemption determinations.

Amendment 31 is more egregious on the same theme. It would give permission for Ministers to specify by regulation which services will be subject to the light-touch regime for contracts and which will be excluded. The DPRRC’s comment on this is that the power

“should be narrowed unless the Government can fully justify it.”

I suspect that the Minister is unable to do that.

Amendment 208 also addresses the remarkably wide freedom given to Ministers with regard to light-touch contracts. Here, it goes into tertiary legislation, allowing Ministers by regulations to

“specify services of a kind specified in regulations of the authority under section 8”.

I hope that members of the Committee understand that; I am not entirely sure that I do.

Clause 86, to which I have tabled a stand part challenge, gives Ministers powers to make regulations about a range of documents on contracts and information about contracts. Clause 109 gives Ministers powers

“to amend this Act in relation to private utilities”,

requiring them to consult

“persons appearing to the authority to represent the views of private utilities, and … such other persons as the authority considers appropriate”—

but not anyone with any standing in terms of public or parliamentary accountability.

Clause 110, which is covered by Amendments 530 and 532, relates entirely to regulatory powers. Our amendments would implement the DPRRC’s recommendations to make pricing determinations for qualifying defence contracts subject to the affirmative procedure and restrict the ministerial freedom to raise financial thresholds above the rate of inflation. On all these clauses, the DPRRC argues that the breadth of ministerial discretion should be narrowed. It comments that, in a number of instances,

“the Government … have chosen this approach for no other reason than that it hasn’t yet developed the underlying policy.”

I ask the Minister to attempt to justify these overextended executive powers or, otherwise, to narrow the powers granted and recognise the importance of parliamentary scrutiny and the principle of parliamentary sovereignty. I beg to move.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I put my name to Amendment 18 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire. I support everything he said. I am worried about the powers that the Government want to keep for themselves. I apologise to the Committee for not being here earlier; I was having a discussion with Ministers on the future railway structure, on which I believe there will be legislation this autumn. To some extent, that pre-empts what is covered by Amendment 18, which is to do with public passenger transport services. It is not just about trains; it includes buses and probably many other things as well.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I support all the amendments in this group, but particularly those tabled by my noble friend Lord Hunt of Kings Heath. In his introduction, he emphasised the importance of rigour, accountability and transparency. I would add advance notice. The Minister who responds may say that it is all in the Treasury Green Book. It probably is, but anybody who has looked at small projects—localism, levelling up, town centres—will know that you have to comply with the Treasury rules, but it is hard to find them, especially for people who do not understand them too easily. My noble friend has put in this amendment and all the other things that go with it. It is really important in a Procurement Bill that people know what to expect and how to do it.

It also needs to be not confidential. I have a couple of examples. The first is an excellent example of the need for a business case. Some noble Lords may know that Cornwall Council was supporting a new stadium for football, rugby and everything else in Truro, which everybody seems to want, and there is private sector involvement. Last week, Cornwall Council decided that it was not going to do this and withdrew from it, saying that there was no proper business case. That was brave, when everybody wants it, but there was no business case. At least it understood what was going on, but that is not the case for an awful lot of other people—I have mentioned the ferry to Scilly before, but will not mention that again—and the other side of it is things such as HS2, where the budget goes up through the roof.

My final question to my noble friend—I know he will do it for Report—and a few other people, concerns how you enforce these things when something goes wrong. That is the biggest problem that we have not solved yet. I look forward to the Minister’s reply.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I hope the Minister is impressed by the cross-party consensus on a number of things on this issue. At the moment, this is very much a skeleton Bill. The demands to put more in the Bill come from all parts and relate to a number of different clauses. I hope that he will be able to respond outside Committee, between Committee and Report, to consider whether the Government might be able to come back to satisfy some of these requests with appropriate language. As we have already stressed, the language is already there in a number of government publications; it is just not in the Bill. I look forward to his response.

Procurement Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Berkeley and Lord Wallace of Saltaire

Committee stage
Monday 4th July 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall speak to my Amendment 7. I do not think I need comment on any of the other amendments in this group. I tabled this probing amendment to ask why this particular piece of text is here:

“This Act does not apply to Her Majesty acting in her private capacity.”


That is quite unusual in Bills. Usually at the end there is a clause that says something along the lines that Her Majesty and, often, the Duke of Cornwall have given their consent to that piece of legislation. Sometimes when I ask the Minister what relevance the Bill has to the Duke of Cornwall they cannot answer; no one seems able to because it is nicely confidential.

Obviously I can see why Her Majesty acting as the Crown is included in this Bill because effectively the Crown is the Government. However, why is the Duke of Cornwall not included in the Bill in his private capacity? He usually appears alongside Her Majesty. The Duchy of Cornwall has said it is in the private sector, which means, whatever we are going to call it, that it is a private sector organisation that presumably will have to comply with every other part of the Bill.

It is interesting to see where the sovereign grant for transport comes in. I happened to get a Written Answer today. I asked who funded the return charter flight of the Duke of Sussex from the United States for the jubilee. According to media reports, it was the most expensive charter plane that you could possibly get, and it seemed to me that, as in so many of these matters, they could actually have gone on the scheduled service. The answer I had was that it was not funded by the sovereign grant because that

“only covers expenses incurred by other Members of the Royal Family when they undertake official duties on behalf of Her Majesty”,

and clearly that was not the case. When it comes to the sovereign grant and the award of contracts for helicopters or planes across the world that the Royal Family—or even occasionally members of the Government—might take, presumably that will be subject to competitive tendering because they are acting in their public capacity.

It would be good to hear from the Minister what correspondence, if any, took place before Clause 1(9) came into the Bill. Are the Government quite happy with it? I look forward to hearing his answer.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, my name is on some of these amendments. My colleagues have spoken to several of them so I shall merely add a few things.

I was particularly concerned by the term “centralised”. The context in which we are operating is that England is by far the most centralised country in the developed world. The concept of a centralised procurement authority implies, “Whitehall tells the rest of you what to do”. For that reason, we think it important to put a number of phrases into the Bill emphasising that local authorities have a part to play. In particular, we should put here the idea that consortia of local authorities—for example, the local authorities of West Yorkshire operating together—have the ability to co-operate as centralised procurement authorities.

There will be a number of other occasions in the Bill where I and my colleagues will want to put in social enterprise, social values, non-profits and charities. They were strongly emphasised in the Green Paper and the consultation; they are not in the Bill. We think that including those elements will help to broaden the way in which Ministers and officials will approach outsourcing and public contracting. This relates also to the issues that my noble friend Lord Purvis raised about the international dimension and the importance of trade and co-operation agreements, and the point the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, made about the unbalanced way in which these occasionally operate: we are much more open to others than they are to us.