Procurement Bill [ Lords ] (First sitting)

Lloyd Russell-Moyle Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 31st January 2023 Public Bill Committees

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

Very often, these contracts consider only value for money and the relationship between the contracting parties, not the consumer. We have tabled other amendments that look at social value and the consumer, but is it not important, particularly in relation to utilities, that the consumer is key? The outcome of that is that the consumer gets a better service, rather than the contracting parties scrimping and saving, or slicing off money for their friends.

[Florence Eshalomi]

Hear, hear, and I thank my hon. Friend for making that important point. We all remember the summer flash floods almost two years ago. People may think, “Actually, London is insulated from that”, but a number of my constituents were affected, and one issue that they outlined was the failure of Thames Water to maintain its pipes. Thames Water is another utility company that is essentially rewarding its shareholders instead of making sure that the public, which receives a vital and critical service from the company, is treated fairly. Customers see their water rates increasing and ad hoc repairs causing disruption on many roads, but all some of those companies think about are their shareholders, who continue to receive massive payouts. When we talk about procurement contracts, it is important that we think about the end users—the customers, the residents, our constituents—who all deserve value for money.

[Florence Eshalomi]

I thank the hon. Lady for making such a vital point. The Minister will wonder why I have so many examples, but just last week, I was notified that another local bank in my constituency, NatWest on Clapham High Street, will close and that a number of the branch’s customers had not been told. That is just another example of key services on our high streets, which many of our constituents rely on, disappearing. It is important that we remember the public element of those key services that continue to benefit from public contracts.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

I want to raise the disastrous Southern Water and its continued spillage of sewage into our seas. Many of my constituents have become ill from sea and river swimming. Southern Water was prosecuted and found guilty of breaching water quality standards and pumping pollution into our rivers and oceans, but in the same year, the chief executive received a six-figure bonus. Clearly, there is something wrong with these utilities: there is no competition, never any procurement and they have the contract permanently, forever and ever. Does a clause that does not allow a company to be excluded from any form of procurement in the future simply let such a company continue to misbehave, as regulations are weak and shareholders run away with the profits?

[Florence Eshalomi]

My hon. Friend makes a valuable point. A number of these companies know that they can get away with it. What they are doing is effectively legal, yet for our constituents who have to suffer the consequences it is not fair. The Government have spoken about trying to make a Procurement Bill that is fair, transparent and value for money, but this is not value for money because our constituents will receive hefty fines if they are a day late with their water bill or even if they send a package without the correct postage. We see the situation with Royal Mail and the chief exec, who, when he appeared before the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee a few weeks ago, was not very clear about the bonus he received, even though the figures were there and the Chair quoted them back to him. It cannot be acceptable for managing directors, chief execs and CEOs to continue to receive big payouts and for their shareholders to be paid while the services that our constituents and the public rely on are not delivered.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

The case of British Telecom and Openreach is another good one. In my constituency, they planned to make all the engineers redundant and to move them to a place in the midlands at lower pay through a fire and rehire scheme. Fundamentally, that means that people will not have well-paid local engineers ploughing money back into the local economy. Is that not the problem of trying to centralise services and underpay engineers and technical staff? The profits go to offshore companies and they do not get recycled into the local economy.

[Florence Eshalomi]

I thank my hon. Friend for making such a valuable point. I am sure that Members will remember the fantastic private Member’s Bill on fire and rehire promoted by my hon. Friend the Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner), which we debated in the House. Sadly, the Government voted it down. Throughout the pandemic, up and down the country, we saw a number of big multinational organisations using the cover of the pandemic to fire their staff, make drastic changes to their work conditions and try to re-employ them on lower wages and weaker conditions. In organisations such as British Gas/Centrica and British Airways, dedicated levels of service from staff were thrown out of the window, yet those companies continue to receive big payouts for their shareholders and CEOs. We need to address this situation; the Government could have addressed it, but they failed to do so. We have a Procurement Bill in front of us that could help to address some of the loopholes, yet the Government are failing to take it on board.

Perhaps the most frustrating thing for our train passengers is the poor service that they continue to receive while they know that the train operating companies that do such a poor job will continue to be rewarded with those contracts. LNER runs the east coast main line and we might think that it would face similar logistics to Avanti, yet it has nowhere near the same problems. It is not just a timing issue. It is shameful that until 27 November 2020, Northern rail services between some towns were carried out using bus-like Pacer trains that were designed to be inexpensive temporary solutions in the ’80s.

We have heard a lot about levelling up, but we cannot level up when we have such inequal transport across the country. I say that as a Londoner, where we have Transport for London and regular buses. Whenever we leave—this issue is raised by many Members from all parties—we see that the level of service and transport provision across the country is not fair.