Procurement Act 2023 (Consequential and Other Amendments) Regulations 2025

Lord Fuller Excerpts

Monday 10th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Robathan (Con)]

My Lords, I was reading this weekend about the Prime Minister’s comments about various things that are coming forward, and it seemed to me that this was something that needed to be addressed.

The regulations address the Procurement Act 2023. It is a Commons question. What are we to think? Are the drafts okay? Are the pieces that are subject to the regulations to be cancelled? The amounts put forward are extremely good—but are they? Noble Lords will understand that people have concerns about the changes that have been made. How much can be seen? How much is numerable and how much is qualifiable and noticeable?

Then we look at the occupational pension schemes regulations. What about the lenient one? Leaping on to Regulations 42D, 42E and 42F—what is all that about? The amendment on branded health services—what is that? What about the amendment of the Competition Act 1998 order 2022? What about the healthcare services regulations to exclude a provider that is a threat to national security? Why is this necessary? Then there is debarment in Regulation 20D. It seems okay, but is it? What about Part 6 and Regulation 33(1)? Finally, we have repeals and revocation.

Can the Minister tell us what all this is about? It seems good—it seems not too bad. We would like to be certain that this is not a problem. Could the Minister please tell the House how this is to be proceeded with? To be fair, I think that there is a possibility of revocation. Will the Minister please tell us what this is before we let it through?

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, I was the leader of a local council in south Norfolk for about 17 years. I ran the council as a business—after all, I did not like paying council tax any more than anybody else did. It took me nearly 20 years to instil the sense of enterprise into what could have been the dead hand of the state. I provided the framework, but not only did we hope that our officials would go that extra mile, we became richer in every sense of the word when they did.

Councils do 140 different things. First elected in 2003, I was conceited enough to think you could run the council as a private business in each of those 140 areas, with strong leadership and the other advantages that only accrue to a council. We do not pay corporation tax; we do not pay dividends; nobody can borrow as cheaply as us, at one notch just below sovereign; and it has been a long time since a well-run council went bust. Best of all, we provide the services that everybody wants, in some cases, every week. How difficult can this be?

In my 17 years as a council leader, I outsourced only one thing: legal services, because I objected to paying 1% of the entire council tax take just on the books before we had even hired the staff. However, I did not believe in compulsory competitive tendering. I tried to do everything in-house: it was run as well as the private sector, but without the dividends or corporation tax because the savings got reinvested in the services or passed on to keep council tax down for everybody.

We built 100 houses a year, delivering a gross income of 40% of all the council tax raised in our district. We rented homes to generate a higher return than we would get at the bank. The maintenance people could turn their hand to fixing a shelf for an old lady or get people out of hospital more quickly. We taught youngsters to swim, which was a nearly £1 million per year enterprise, and worked with GPs to prescribe fitness in our leisure centres.

I needed a 17-year run at this, but when I stepped down to come into your Lordships’ House last year, council tax was 30% lower than inflation over the same period. It can be done.

So why am I speaking in this debate? It is because, sad to say, we could have gone further and done more. I direct noble Lords’ attention to new Regulations 42A relating to vertical arrangements and 42B to horizontal ones. A vertical arrangement is where a council wants to run a service itself. A horizontal one is where several councils may club together over a wider area to achieve the same outcome. On too many occasions, having to follow these pointless procurement procedures held us back. They acted as an excuse for work. They were a drag anchor on not just my ambition but that of the talented young graduates we struggled to recruit.

If we are to change the state, if we are to be more agile and if government is to work for the people, not the other way round, we cannot afford the sort of verbiage that decorates pages 12-15 of the public procurement regulations that my noble friend Lord Robathan regrets. They achieve nothing for the taxpayer and even less for residents. They encourage huge amounts to be spent on lawyers. They force delay and everybody else pays more as a result.

Looking at the small print of the regulations, one sees that the well-meaning but counterproductive way they work is to mark down the entrepreneurial councils which can and should be setting an example, especially in rural areas. These are the sorts of councils that want to earn a shilling by collecting the trade waste from a remote bed and breakfast as the bin lorry passes by every Tuesday and whose proprietor is grateful because no other waste company will touch it.

The attributable turnover calculations, the time spent assessments and the relevant period durations are just an excuse to snuff out the sorts of good behaviours that we should be encouraging—not just in councils but across the whole of government. They act as recruiting sergeants for those with an axe to grind. I listened carefully to what the Minister said, but in truth they prevent local firms co-operating with their local councils, lest a large corporation cries foul and challenges in the courts. They foster a risk-negative, rather than an ambition-positive, approach to public services. They stand in the way of councils getting together and co-operating to do the right thing in the public good for the public’s benefit.

Where do your Lordships think Birmingham would be if Joseph Chamberlain had had to follow this stuff? Where would the clean water and gas that built that metropolis be if he had had to follow these pettifogging rules?

The Explanatory Note explains how new Regulations 42A and 42B will affect councils by giving waste collection as an example. These regs should be consigned to the dustbin of history. I thought this Government had instructed officials to clear a path through the treacle that holds us back, but no—it was just too much to ask.

My noble friend is right to regret, and it is something we should all reflect on. We are never going to get growth if we carry on like this.

[Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I was not intending to speak but as there seem to be so few people here, I will just say a few words. I draw noble Lords’ attention to an organisation called the Procurement Files, which is actually very good at looking in detail at the 300,000-plus contracts on the UK government public database. When you have a glance at that, it raises a lot of questions.

Whenever the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office makes a procurement with a contractor for something happening abroad, does every single Minister sign off on it or is it done by officials? I am particularly interested because £25 million has just been agreed to one contractor to do green urban growth in Somalia. I looked at the detail of what that meant and thought, “My goodness, that is surely not a priority for what is happening in Somalia at the moment”. There is another one where it is spending half a million pounds to send 15 Porsches to the embassy in Tirana to be distributed to prisons in Albania. There are a whole range of these things.

I appreciate that most of what has been said so far is about what is happening in this country. However, if the Minister is unable to respond today, could she send me something about how these decisions are made? Quite honestly, it looks like we need some detail of the goings on, as is happening in the United States of America. I think the public would be horrified if they knew the detail of what some of their taxpayers’ money is going on.