Local Government Procurement

Hugh Bayley Excerpts

Thursday 3rd July 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mr Betts]

I will take a couple of minutes to summarise this constructive, well-informed debate, in which agreement has generally been found across the parties and between the Select Committee and both Front Benches. That should be welcomed. I think that we have all ultimately agreed that this is a matter for local councils, and that it is for local government in general, and the Local Government Association in particular, to help councils that are not up to the same level of procurement practice as their counterparts that are delivering a first-class service to learn from that best practice and emulate it. I am sure the Select Committee will want to return to the issue in future to monitor and assess whether the improvements that we think can be made have been made.

I have one slight worry about a disagreement that I had not expected. On behalf of the Select Committee, I identified £45 billion in local government procurement. To show that I was paying close attention to what the two Front-Bench spokespeople said, I think my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham (Roberta Blackman-Woods) put the figure at £50 billion, while the Minister set it at £57 billion. If we had had more speakers, we might have seen an exponential growth in local authority procurement. Clearly, there is a difference in how we evaluate it. We may want to clear that up at some point in future.

Finally, I am sure that it is appropriate for me, on behalf of the whole Committee, to thank Sarah Coe, our second Clerk, who was the lead officer in helping us produce this report. We very much appreciated her excellent support, which was instrumental in helping us get to the end result. I also thank Colin Cram, our specialist adviser, who was extremely helpful as well.

[Hugh Bayley (in the Chair)]

Thank you all for an interesting debate.

Question put and agreed to.