Procurement Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Fox and Lord Wigley

Committee stage
Wednesday 6th July 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Wigley (PC)]

My Lords, I want to address the change in relation to Scottish law. Before doing that, I will pick up the point made a moment ago by the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, with regard to the influence of European terminology. She will not be surprised to know that I have no problem with the influence of European terminology; if we are to hunt all European influences out of our legislation, it will take a very long time and leave quite a lot of uncertainty around the place. None the less, I take the point she makes with regard to the substance of the implications, and the question of a capacity to influence is a very important consideration. If a capacity to influence exists, that may have an ongoing impact without it being written in black and white. That has to be taken on board.

I want to ask the Minister about the change to get in line with Scottish law. If there is in future a change in Scottish law or a change in the ruling in the courts in Scotland, presumably that could have an implication for the way in which the Bill, when enacted, works out. Does that mean there will have to be a review every time there is a change in Scotland that might impact on this, because we are working within one market and we need to make sure there is consistency running through this? Perhaps I can park that question with the Minister, as it is a relevant one that arises from what he said.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, at the beginning of the Committee the Minister had a teaser with his announcement. It is very clear that he is not going to resign, because no Minister would put himself through this process and then resign. We can be clear about his intentions.

The noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, said that she was interested in this and that perhaps some of us might not be. I am interested. Both the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, and the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, have made important contributions to this group of amendments.

Since Monday, much industry has proceeded. We have new groups of amendments and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, pointed out, we have explanations for those amendments and what they seek to achieve. We thank the Bill team and the Government Whips’ Office for that hard work, which cannot have been easy. We also had a meeting with the Bill team this morning, which has helped us somewhat.

This is progress, although I always like to spoil praise by saying that we really should not have been starting from here in the first place. This is vital legislation that will set the scene for procurement right across our country, and the details need to be correct. We have started to hear that, in just one area, the details remain very much open to question.

Some of the amendments in this group are relatively small changes, including Amendments 10, 12, 16 and 17; others are trying to do a bit more. As we heard from the Minister, Amendment 11 rights a problem that was identified by both my noble friend Lord Wallace and the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, of groups of local authorities working in tandem.

I welcome that the Government have taken the advice of the LGA, but it seems slightly strange that it was sought or delivered after Second Reading rather than some time before it. One of the problems we sometimes have with the Government is that they forget the central role of local authorities, particularly in something like this. Local authorities should have been front and centre in the process of writing this legislation, but, far from it, it seems that they are something of an afterthought. That is where some difficulties are emerging, because, in a sense, we are trying to bend things back to fit local authorities when they should have been framed for local authorities in the first place. This amendment is welcome, with the caveat that we need clarity.

The noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, brought up the issue of clarity and the lack of definition. We heard the result of one of the legal cases that went to the European Union, the Teckal exemption, set out by the noble Lord. Most of the controversy of the European legislation has been hammered out in courts. As I said on Monday, we are spoiling for lots of legal fights in this legislation because of the loose definitions, absence of definitions and cross-definitions. I completely take the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, that if we try to write across something using terms which do not appear in the UK lexicon of company law, we will be starting from first principles in the court in order to define them. That will not be in the interests of any government business or of local authorities. We need a clear and legally binding understanding of what all these terms mean. The Minister must use either the Dispatch Box or the legislation—preferably the latter—to clear up that ambiguity.

The second part of Amendment 13 is an example of what the Government giveth the Lords taketh away. Having cut across the public contracts regulation and removed exemptions for public undertaking and private utilities, as I understand it the Government are, with this amendment, replacing those exemptions and focusing this vertical exemption only on public utilities. As far as we are concerned, that is perfectly fine, but again, this is an example where the Bill has had to be corrected because of missing points that cut across. There are so many cross-cuts in this legislation.

Amendments 15 and 16 are another example. Here, as the Minister set out and as the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, requested, “legal activity” has meaning in Scotland and not the meaning that the Government intended for this Bill. We now have to choose something that has no meaning at all, which is “legal services”. In the words of the Government, there is a flexible definition for this. We are being asked to put a flexible definition into the centre of a Bill. I am not keen on this sort of flexibility of language, and this is another example of flexible or misunderstandable language being put into legislation. We are looking for clarity from the Minister. If it is not Pepper v Hart clarity, we need clarity written into what we have. On some of the issues mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, and others, we need to remove that “flexibility” from our language in the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wigley (PC)]

My Lords, I want to raise one narrow aspect; that of Dŵr Cymru, Welsh Water. The position of Welsh Water is somewhat different from that of the other water providers within England and Wales; I think the situation in Scotland is different again. Dŵr Cymru is a not-for-profit company, and the assumption and understanding is that nothing in the Bill undermines the capability of the Welsh Government to award the contract within the service area of Dŵr Cymru to a not-for-profit company of this sort. Quite clearly, that has a different impact than if that market was open for competition on a profit-making basis.

The performance of Dŵr Cymru is generally in most areas regarded as having been very satisfactory. There are ongoing arguments about quality of river water, et cetera, and noble Lords will be aware of those, but with regard to the provision of water, there is no wish—certainly at present, and I cannot foresee one in the near future—for there to be anything that disturbs that apple cart. I hope that the noble Baroness will be able to give an assurance on the record in this Committee that nothing in the Bill can, in any circumstances, undermine the ability of the Welsh Government to award the franchise for providing water in Wales to a not-for-profit company such as Dŵr Cymru.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, very briefly, I thank the Minister for her clear statement. The subject of utilities has come up both on Monday and today, and we are beginning to get some clarity around how the whole utility story fits together, but anything more she can give us on that would be helpful. This is probably not helpful, but it seems to me to be an analysis of the issue. The majority of the trade deals to date are essentially rollover trade deals, and to paraphrase the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, this legislation is essentially rollover legislation. However, trade deals such as the Australia deal are not rollover trade deals. We are in danger of trying to pour new wine into old skins here.

The issue that my noble friend highlighted here is an example where the new-style trade deal is not easily catered for in the old-style legislation, which is essentially rollover legislation. I am not sure what the solution to that is, other than “more work needed”, but I think—and this is a dispassionate and hopefully helpful observation —we are looking at a new trading position. The Government talk about that all the time, but we are essentially looking at legislation that was dealing with an existing set of trade deals which are, by their nature, different from the new ones. This is what is being thrown up, and we will start to see problems thrown up increasingly.

Energy Performance of Buildings (England and Wales) (Amendment) Regulations 2022

Debate between Lord Fox and Lord Wigley

Wednesday 16th March 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, I spent many sleepless nights reading this through in detail, but I must admit it was time well spent.

[Lord Wigley (PC)]

It sent you to sleep.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

I will keep off that subject.

I congratulate the Government on implementing a computer system that means it is actually cheaper to do something—perhaps the department could speak to the National Health Service about its implementation of digital systems, which could be better.

I am pleased that the Minister went through the slightly broader issues of home efficiency. This is a big subject and I am not going to speak for long on it, but I need to talk about it a little, and I welcome the fact that he did. I recognise that making our homes and buildings more generally energy efficient—we have 29 million of them in the UK and 2 million commercial buildings—is not an easy task. We all recognise that. But it is something that has to be done to meet net zero.

Subsidy Control Bill

Debate between Lord Fox and Lord Wigley

Committee stage
Monday 7th February 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Wigley (PC)]

My Lords, I shall speak to these amendments very briefly. This has been a bipartisan debate, and there is a consensus across the Committee that amendments along these lines can improve the working of the Bill and make it more acceptable in the court of public opinion. I urge the Minister, if he cannot accept the amendments as they stand today, to consider at least bringing forward his own amendments at the appropriate time.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, I was not intending to speak to this set of amendments until I received the Minister’s letter—this time before the Committee started rather than during it, which is a great step forward. Unfortunately, the letter creates a problem for me because what I understand from the debate seems not to be represented in this letter, so perhaps the Minister can explain.

On the issue of subsidy schemes, the letter states:

“As my noble friend Baroness Bloomfield stated during the Committee session, all schemes must be uploaded to the transparency database”—


and I understand that to be true, so the scheme will go up on the database. The letter continues:

“This database will be freely accessible and is a key part of the new subsidy control regime, enabling the public and any interested parties to see which subsidies have been awarded, and to whom.”

But my understanding is that people will be able to see only those subsidies that exceed the limit, whereas the implication of the letter is that all subsidies will be accessible to everyone freely via the database. I would like the Minister to acknowledge that that is not the case, whether they are within a scheme or stand-alone, and this letter is therefore incorrect.

Digital Economy Bill

Debate between Lord Fox and Lord Wigley

Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords
Wednesday 22nd February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, I associate myself with, and support, Amendment 1. The noble Lord, Lord Mendelsohn, covered it comprehensively and I do not want to go over the same territory.

In his opening speech in Committee, the Minister correctly hung his hat on delivering world-class digital connectivity. We can all subscribe to that. There was no doubting the mood of noble Lords in Committee, and certainly no doubting the mood of the country given that we are some distance from being world class in that regard. The objective of this amendment is to help move us along that road. At the time, the Minister associated the Government with the gigabit objective of the noble Lord, Lord Mendelsohn, while firmly ruling it out as a USO objective. The Minister has the notion that we should rely on Ofcom to set the target, that we should rely on a public consultation, and that, eventually, a USO will emerge. In the Minister’s view, this House is not expected to advise Ofcom on where that USO should be set. We disagree with that, because, once the USO is established, it will be trimmed, edited and manipulated. Then, no doubt, the debates will begin among the service deliverers about what exactly the USO means.

We have already seen the length and byzantine nature of the debate that can unfold when Openreach and BT start to discuss matters. We have only to look at the protracted ownership debate that continues unabated. That lengthy discourse will lead only one way; it will trim and pull back from whatever USO Ofcom establishes. For this reason we believe that Ofcom’s hand needs to be firmed up. It needs support and we must strengthen its hand in dealing with what is essentially a monopoly and very experienced public sector supplier. Therefore, this amendment is designed to support Ofcom to take the steps needed on the way to delivering the world-class digital network to which we aspire. That is why we think it should be accepted.

Proposed new subsection (2B) in the amendment contains a medium-term objective which the Minister has endorsed. We need to move towards gigabit connectivity. That will drive increased fibre-to-the-premises connection. Proposed new subsection (2BA) sets a difficult yet achievable goal for 2020 which Ofcom itself has modelled, as the noble Lord, Lord Mendelsohn, set out. It is important to have both those objectives because one can be the enemy of the other unless they are both included in the Bill. We cannot second-guess the country’s future need but we can be certain that it will be more than 10 megabits. We must be in a position to assist Ofcom in establishing a USO that can begin to deliver the needs of this country. It is for that reason that we support Amendment 1.

[Lord Wigley (PC)]

My Lords, I declare an interest immediately, because in both my household and my neighbour’s household we have had immense problems in securing adequate speeds. I referred at earlier stages to some of these difficulties.

I very much support both Amendments. Amendment 1 states that,

“by 2020, the following will be available in every household”,

and the list includes,

“download speeds of 30 megabits per second”.

This is absolutely necessary, because under the present provision, the providers just are not willing to do that. They are willing to rest their case on the fact that it is too expensive to run the necessary connection to a household, not just in far-flung rural areas but in conurbations and villages. I am within half a mile of the main exchange and within 200 metres of a box. However, because of the way they have laid out the connectivity sequence, we cannot get decent speeds. It is irritating that the excuse can be used that it is too expensive to provide a connection.

I assume that if there was a legislative requirement along the lines laid out in the proposed new subsections in Amendments 1 and 2, that would be overcome. If the Government are not willing to accept these amendments, I would be interested to know what response they would give to people who are facing this difficulty. It is not a technical impossibility, just too expensive. I was on the committee which dealt with the privatisation of telephones, with the late John Golding and others—it took a considerable amount of time to go through—and assurances were then given that of course, the responsibilities that had been on public bodies would be continued. I accept that, to a large extent, BT has done that. However, safeguards are needed, particularly in rural areas, and I would be grateful if the Minister said how he will cover that if he cannot accept these amendments.