Public Contracts: Conflicts of Interest

Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts

Thursday 17th November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen]

Obviously, these appointments are the responsibility of each department, and each department follows the Civil Service Code, which sets out the process for dealing with any possible breaches. Essentially, cases are dealt with by the department according to its own processes and can ultimately be referred to the Civil Service Commission to investigate. The propriety and ethics team can give general advice on the application of the code.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, of course data protection does not prevent the people on that conflict of interest committee being willing to have their names released, so will the Minister tell us whether they can be asked to release their names? Will she also comment on the other big conflict of interest, which is the revolving door? The committee that looks at this for ministerial and civil servant retirees has never turned down any of those appointments, many of whom then turn up on exactly these committees but technically have no conflict of interest. Will she agree to review the terms of reference of that committee?

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen]

I do not think that I can go further than what I said about the Data Protection Act. As far as public appointments are concerned, we need to remember that there is a Commissioner for Public Appointments. Appointments come under the remit of that commissioner and they are made using the process from the commissioner’s Code of Practice for Ministerial Appointments to Public Bodies. This is a strong code of practice and it is backed up by the regulations under the Act—the Public Contracts Regulations 2015—which set out the requirement to take,

“appropriate measures to effectively prevent, identify and remedy conflicts of interest arising in the conduct of procurement procedures so as to avoid any distortion of competition and to ensure equal treatment of all economic operators”.