Procurement Bill [HL]

Baroness Hayman of Ullock Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 6th July 2022 Grand Committee

I apologise to the Minister for springing a question of that kind on him. It may be that he would like to consider it and reply by letter at a later stage, but it puzzles me why Scottish Ministers are not included in the definition of “appropriate authority”.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, for tabling these amendments in the first place, and I thank those Members who put their names to them. It is important that we have had the opportunity to debate the report produced by the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, a report that the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, described as a scorcher. I think we all agree that there is a lot in here of great concern, and it is very important that we have spent this time going through it. I also thank members of the committee for the work they did in going into such detail on this very complex Bill, to draw our attention to their serious concerns and the problems that we need to look at and resolve.

I will not go into a great amount of detail. Other noble Lords have talked about the detail of the report so there is no point in my repeating that. I will just draw the Committee’s attention to a few things. My noble friend Lord Berkeley started the debate by expressing his concerns about the broad range of powers—the Henry VIII powers, as they are described—and other noble Lords have talked about their concerns about them. The noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, felt that some of them were potentially dangerous. If noble Lords’ concerns are that strong, it is really important that we look at how to address them. She drew attention to a number of particularly damning paragraphs. There was also talk about the fact that a large number of clauses should be subject to the affirmative procedure rather than the negative one, and of course we absolutely support that.

I draw the Grand Committee’s attention to paragraph 60 of the report, which was the one that struck me in the context of the way that a lot of Bills, legislation and policy development have been happening recently. If noble Lords will bear with me, I will read it out. Talking about Clause 109, it says:

“This is, in effect, a skeleton clause as the real operation of the exemption process is to be left to regulations. We are very concerned that the Government appears to have chosen this approach for no other reason than that it hasn’t yet developed the underlying policy.”


That gives me great concern because it seems almost to be becoming the norm, and it is not the right way to go about making regulations and legislation. The DPRRC then talks about its Democracy Denied? report, which the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, mentioned, and says that

“we drew attention to the issue of the inclusion of powers in bills which were, in effect, ‘a tool to cover imperfect policy development’. We said this was unacceptable and that we looked to the Government to undertake the systemic reforms necessary to prevent its happening. It is disappointing to find evidence in this Bill that this issue has not been addressed.”

That was the only further concern that I wanted to draw the Committee’s attention to today. A number of us have worked on a lot of Bills now, and there is a worrying lean towards this lack of policy development before Bills are drawn together and published. That is often why the Bills then come into so many difficulties. It would be better if all this was sorted out much earlier, so that we all knew where we were and could understand and better support the Government in producing good legislation. Some very interesting questions have been asked, including a very specific one from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, and I look forward to the Minister’s response.

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I thank all those who have spoken. I take seriously the gravity of the remarks made. I assure my noble friend Lord Blencathra, whose chairmanship of the committee was distinguished—he can speak even more freely now that he is no longer in that role—that while I did not catch the names of all the individuals that he asked me to refer his remarks to, I will make sure that that is done as he requested.

On the question raised by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, it is a matter of regret —we discussed this on the first day—but the Scottish Government have declined to be part of this legislation. They do not wish to be. They wish to pursue their own course and obviously that is why they are omitted from the definition of an appropriate authority under the legislation. It would be odd if they were an appropriate authority to alter legislation which they declined to take part in. That is the explanation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

To go back to Amendment 20, the noble Baroness gave some useful explanation of the definition of a utility. I want to go on briefly to the example that the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, mentioned, which is freeports. That presumably comes under paragraph 5 of Schedule 4, on page 86. It is not clear to me whether any of the activities of a freeport are exempt or not. In other words, the freeport gets a load of money from the Government, but does it have to comply with the procurement regulations and everything else in the Bill? Does it have to be transparent about how it complies, whether it has sent out for three quotes or whatever, and whether the contracts have been awarded fairly? That is one example, and I expect there are many others in other sectors. It would be interesting to know because when we get to Schedule 2, there are so many different definitions in there that it is quite difficult to understand which applies to what. I am sure that, at some stage, the Ministers will try to give us some examples of all these different issues on page 81.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, I must say, I find the utilities section of this quite confusing in some areas. The more clarification we can get from the Minister, the better. It is not just this bit; it is the fact that it is cross-referenced a lot right across the Bill and is impacted by so many other pieces of legislation, including internationally.

We talked with officials about the Australia trade agreement this morning; the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, raised this. I am still slightly confused as to how that all links together. Rather sadly, after the discussion, I went and found the relevant parts and read them. The Bill talks about universal service obligations, postal monopolies, exclusive suppliers and specified collection, transport and delivery services. I know that the Minister is not able to come back to us on this now but I would appreciate some kind of written explanation of how this all works together and what the implications are of having that kind of reference to postal services in a trade agreement. What impact does that have on future procurement legislation? Will the Procurement Bill have an impact on future trade agreements in this area? Personally, I find this quite confusing; it would be extremely helpful to have it laid out in a crystal-clear fashion so that we do not end up with this kind of confusion and the debates we are having.

I will not repeat all the things that noble Lords said when they talked about having more clarification on Schedule 2. I will just briefly come back to cross-referencing throughout the Bill. In the previous debate, we talked about the committee report, which again mentions Schedule 4, the utility activities exposed to competition, the provisions of the WTO agreement—the GPA—and so on. For me, a lot of this is about having a clear understanding of which utilities lie in this group and which lie in that group; which utilities will have to follow certain rules; which will be exempt; and how they will be exempt. I would appreciate proper clarification on all those areas because this is a lot to take in; a lot of it needs to be right as well.

I appreciate that I have asked the Minister to do quite a complicated task but, in Committee and certainly ahead of Report, that sort of information and clarification would be extremely helpful.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I thank noble Lords. We have listened—I thought that we explained the Australian postal services to the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, in our debate on a previous group—but obviously further questions still need to be addressed. As the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, clearly said, the issues of utilities’ groupings and the rules that apply to each group are not yet clear enough. I know that will take extra time for everybody but I suggest that we pull together another meeting purely on utilities and their interaction, particularly with the trade agreements that are in place now and future trade agreements that could be in place.

At the same time, I remember freeports coming up in the first Committee debate. I do not have any further information but we will get that information and discuss it. If required, we will send a letter afterwards confirming everything we have discussed so that noble Lords have that in their packs.

I have good news for the noble Lord, Lord Wigley. I can assure him that this Bill will not change anything from the current regime with regard to Welsh water. I will not try to say it in Welsh because I am not very good at it. I hope that this assures him that everything is fine in Wales.

I think that the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, brought up freeports on the first day of Committee. We will invite him to have a discussion on that.

These were minor and technical amendments that seem to have grown into something much bigger but they serve to clarify the Bill and ensure consistency on the provision of utilities contracts. I therefore hope that noble Lords will support them.