Public Procurement Processes

Debate between Hywel Williams and Florence Eshalomi

Wednesday 25th January 2023 Westminster Hall

[Florence Eshalomi (Vauxhall) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms McVey. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mick Whitley), who not only managed to sit through Second Reading of the Procurement Bill, but clearly came out thinking he wanted more. Who can blame him? He spoke passionately about the importance of the wider social and economic considerations. He also highlighted the need for procurement to help promote British businesses and invest in places such as his constituency.

I also thank other Members, who have spoken with a lot of knowledge on this issue. On the face of it, it can seem quite dry and clunky, but it is important, as all Members have highlighted. My hon. Friend the Member for Hemsworth (Jon Trickett) mentioned that almost £300 billion is spent on procurement, yet the OECD has highlighted concerns about fraud or corruption in many areas. It is important that we look at which companies are getting contracts and ensure that enough procurement officers are reviewing them. How about we insource instead of outsource, and work with local councils to get those contracts? I am pleased that many local authorities, including mine in Lambeth, are looking at insourcing.

It is always a pleasure to see the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) in these debates. He spoke with a lot of passion about some of the things happening in Northern Ireland. As a former London Assembly member and chair of its transport committee, I know that Wrightbus is doing fantastic work to produce buses that are going up and down London. Last year, the Mayor of London went to County Antrim to visit the Wrightbus depot and look at more buses coming on to London streets. That is why it is important to invest in local UK businesses that help the whole of the UK.

The hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman) highlighted the glaring omission that we are seeing from this Government. Climate change must be front and centre of everything that we do. Yesterday, my hon. Friend the Member for Hemsworth and I had the honour of meeting some fantastic young people who had come to see my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham East (Nadia Whittome) about the Climate Education Bill. It is so important that we teach our young people, who are so passionate about the climate emergency, yet we are seeing an omission here.

[Hywel Williams]

The hon. Lady will recall that I mentioned the Social Partnership and Public Procurement (Wales) Bill, which is focused on achieving some socially responsible outcomes. Does she share my concern that the aims of that Bill might be in conflict with the Government’s current legislation, which is—as far as I can see—much more concerned with process?

[Florence Eshalomi]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising that important point. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bootle (Peter Dowd) highlighted, key issues were raised in the other place that now seem to have disappeared from the Bill. That is one of those many areas, and I will come on to it later.

We have heard that procurement makes up around a third of public spending. If it is done right, procurement can have such a transformative impact on our whole economy. My hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead highlighted that social value should not just be an empty phrase. Social Enterprise UK found that between 2010 and 2020, the UK may have missed out on £700 billion-worth of economic, social and environmental opportunities. We are missing out on so much. That is a staggering amount of money. It is crucial that we address some of the problems in the Procurement Bill as it passes through the House.

As I mentioned on Second Reading, Labour supports the introduction of the Bill and recognises the genuine steps forward that it takes. That is why we want to work constructively with the Government to produce a Bill that is fit not just for today, but for the next Government and the Government after that. The Minister has heard my concerns about the Bill a number of times—we have sat through urgent questions and Second Reading—and we will be spending the new few weeks in Committee, which I am sure he is looking forward to, but I want to raise some of the problems that we see with it. I hope that he will think carefully before tomorrow’s deadline for tabling amendments and look at how he can make genuine improvements to the Bill. I am sure that he has had the chance to look at the amendment paper and that none of our concerns are novel to him, so I hope that he will be able to provide full and frank answers to the House on the issues that I raise.

First, I have deep concerns about the workings of the excluded, excludable and debarment systems in the Bill. My hon. Friend the Member for Hemsworth highlighted the practice of companies winning contracts and then doing down staff wages. The right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) highlighted the CCTV cameras that councils are sourcing from Hikvision and the fact that we should be worried about some of the companies we are seeking contracts for. Labour is clear that we do not want to see those who act improperly, who abuse their workers or who are a threat to this country being awarded public contracts.

We therefore welcome the purpose of the powers in the Bill, but we can see loopholes in the system, which must be closed while the Bill is before the House. It is concerning that references to excludable contracts seem to give the contracting authorities discretion about whether to disregard a tender. Can the Minister please explain why excludable suppliers are not automatically disregarded in the same way as excluded suppliers?

While I understand that there may be some need for flexibility on discretion grounds, there is no mechanism in the Bill to decide where that flexibility should stand. That is extremely troubling given that grounds as serious as national security can be discretionary—that is outrageous. Can the Minister assure us that companies that are considered national threats will be excluded from contracts under the Bill? Will he ensure that contracting authorities will never be able to bypass this judgment and not disregard such suppliers during the process?

A similar problem exists with the debarment list. In his letter to Baroness Neville-Rolfe on 4 August, the Minister in the other place, Lord True, wrote that

“the debarment list is intended to focus on the most serious cases of supplier misconduct, where suppliers may pose a significant risk to contracting authorities or the public. It is not the case that every supplier which meets a ground for exclusion will be considered for inclusion on the debarment list. Rather, there will be a prioritisation policy which governs how cases are selected for investigation. It is likely that only a small number of cases will be considered each year.”

However, the Bill outlines no such qualification for ascension to the debarment list. As it is currently drafted, the only firm qualifications beyond the Minister’s wishes are mandatory and discretionary grounds for exclusion. Given the merry-go-round of Ministers we have seen over the past year, does the Minister not believe that it is right to put a mechanism in the Bill to provide clarity about the scope of the debarment list?

Will the Minister confirm that the Government’s intention for the debarment list is as Lord True laid out in his letter to Baroness Neville-Rolfe? If only the most serious cases of misconduct go on the debarment list, how can it be fair that those put on the list for discretionary reasons are still treated as excludable suppliers? If the Minister believes that a supplier poses a significant risk to the public, that supplier must be disregarded automatically from the process as an excluded supplier.

I have a further concern about the 30-day payment period down the supply chain. On Second Reading, the Paymaster General said that

“we will be paying the prime contractor within the 30-day period. People in the supply chain will be aware of the contract under which they are supplying to the prime, and we expect that 30-day payment to trickle all the way down”.—[Official Report, 9 January 2023; Vol. 725, c. 347.]

Many small and medium-sized enterprises in all our constituencies rely on prompt payment to keep afloat; they cannot rely on expectations of a trickle-down effect. The Minister may say that it will call into doubt the contract of the prime supplier, but how long will this take?