Procurement Bill [HL]

Earl of Dundee Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 18th July 2022 Grand Committee

These two amendments are designed to encourage UK Ministers to clean up public sector contracts by ensuring that taxpayers’ money is spent on companies with high standards, not ones with grubby standards, such as Bain. I ask that the Minister accepts them and pursues this matter with his colleagues in the Cabinet Office. I will happily discuss privately with him any drafting changes that might be required to satisfy the Government’s requirements in this Bill, but I think it necessary that Ministers provide leadership on this, particularly by making an example of Bain, or else everybody else will think that they can do the same thing.

[The Earl of Dundee (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 353, introduced by my noble friend Lady Stroud.

As many of your Lordships know, the United Kingdom is a signatory to the Council of Europe’s anti-trafficking convention, an international treaty that affects Europe and beyond, with Israel having acceded a short while ago as the second non-member state of the Council of Europe. Last week, on 13 July, its Group of Experts on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings—GRETA —published its annual report for 2021. In December last year, a number of recommendations were adopted, based on the evaluation report produced for the United Kingdom, among other states. Certainly our Modern Slavery Act 2015 has enabled the United Kingdom to take a lead internationally.

I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, on his excellent recent Council of Europe report, Concerted Action Against Human Trafficking and the Smuggling of Migrants. The prospect of concerted action has been assisted, not least by our 2015 Act along with other steps taken by the UK Government to prevent and eradicate human trafficking from businesses and supply chains, including in the public sector.

Migrants and refugees are clearly a particularly vulnerable group of people who fall prey to human traffickers far too often. The Russian war on Ukraine has displaced more than 10 million people, and 5.5 million Ukrainians have been recorded across Europe since 24 February. They constitute a vast group of potential victims, having fled shelling, bombardment and occupation by the Russian army; hence all the more so is there a compelling case for linking human trafficking and modern slavery with making provisions for reducing the dependency of public bodies on goods and services that originate in a country considered by the United Kingdom as either a systemic competitor or a threat.

In that context, with this legislation, Amendment 353 in the names of my noble friend Lady Stroud and others is much to be welcomed. I hope that the Minister will feel able to accept it.