Covid-19: Economy Update

Debate between Lord Agnew of Oulton and Lord Campbell-Savours

Tuesday 27th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

The noble Lord makes an extremely important point. By coincidence, I am the Minister working on the programme to move civil servants out of London, which was recently announced. The Prime Minister will be making more comments on this shortly but, given that I have lived this for six months, I can reassure my noble friend that we have identified 14 hubs with spokes across Britain, including the devolved authorities. The most important part is to get the senior civil servants out of London, because they make decisions on the lives of people from whom they are, in my view, far too detached. At the moment, some 65% of all senior civil servants in the country are here in London, and the vast majority in this postcode. We are committed to ensuring that opportunities for those senior jobs are outside the capital, and that they make policies that affect citizens in those areas.

[Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, the availability of an effective coronavirus testing regime is critical to reopening the economy. With the reported Good Law Project prospective legal action on the procurement of testing equipment in mind, can we have an assurance that the procurement programme has, extraordinarily, either National Audit Office prior approval or that government lawyers are satisfied that contracts do not breach the 2015 Public Contract Regulations? Can we have that assurance in writing, as it is very important for business confidence?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

The noble Lord’s question is timely, because part of my responsibility is for the procurement reform rules which we are putting into place and will be able to use once we leave the EU on 1 January. Part of the problem we have had over this crisis is the extremely clunky method of procurement that is imposed on us by the OJEU rules. It will need primary legislation, but we have designed a programme that will deal with exactly the issues that the noble Lord raises. If he is interested, I am happy to send him a draft copy of the Green Paper, which will be available in the next week or two.