Procurement Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Aberdare and Baroness Thornton

Committee stage
Wednesday 13th July 2022 Grand Committee

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak very briefly to Amendment 75A in my name. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, my noble friend Lady Hayman and the noble Earl, Lord Devon, for putting their names to this amendment.

This amendment is consistent with the remarks I have already made in Committee: that there should be specific reference to “social value” as being part of public benefit in order to provide clarity to public bodies, companies and social enterprises; and that social value should be embedded in the procurement process through the appropriate guidance and reporting requirements for public bodies, which this amendment concerns.

This new clause would be added to the Bill mandating the Government to provide “guidance” to the public sector about “how to implement social value”. The Committee is aware that this is of great concern, given that the public policy—the legislative framework—is there for social value, and yet there is no mention of it in the Bill and no mention of how it might be implemented or how it might work with the procurement regime. I hope that we can resolve this matter between now and Report.

[Lord Aberdare (CB)]

My Lords, I have Amendment 71 in this group, which is a simple probing amendment seeking to understand why the Bill exempts contracting authorities from having regard to the national procurement policy statement for contracts involving frameworks or dynamic markets. I can find no explanation, in the Bill’s Explanatory Notes or elsewhere, why such arrangements should not be covered by the terms of the national policy statement, but perhaps the Minister will be able to give a simple answer.

A large number of construction-related public projects will be procured through frameworks and dynamic market contracts. A framework is an agreement with suppliers to establish terms governing contracts that may be awarded during the life of the agreement. The Government themselves acknowledge in the Cabinet Office’s Construction Playbook that framework agreements, as a means of longer-term strategic collaboration in construction, can provide the best medium through which procurement and contracting can deliver transformational improvements.

Last December, the Cabinet Office also published Constructing the Gold Standard: An Independent Review of Public Sector Construction Frameworks, based on an independent and objective review commissioned from Professor David Mosey of King’s College London. To quote the then Cabinet Office Minister:

“This review recognises the potential of frameworks as a powerful engine-room for implementing Construction Playbook policies that include strategic planning, integrated teams, continuous improvement and the delivery of better, safer, faster and greener project outcomes.”


The review states that the Civil Engineering Contractors Association

“identifies over 1,660 public sector construction frameworks procured between 2015 and 2019 with an aggregate value of up to £220 billion.”

Given that the national procurement policy statement will seek to define strategic priorities and set the parameters for better public procurement in line, I hope, with the gold standard prescribed by the review, why should contracting authorities be exempt from having regard to it in agreeing the terms of frameworks?

A similar question arises in relation to dynamic markets. At Second Reading, the Minister stated:

“The new concept of dynamic markets … is intended to provide greater opportunity for SMEs to join and win work in the course of a contracting period.”—[Official Report, 25/5/22; col. 929.]


Again, it is not clear to me why the terms of the national procurement policy statement should not also apply to dynamic markets—although I am quite prepared to believe that I may be missing something.