Trade Bill (Fourth sitting)

Matt Western Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 4th sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 18th June 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Bill Esterson]

I will.

[Matt Western]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Graham. On the environmental amendment, so many authorities have shown leadership in recent months on adopting a zero carbon objective. At a simplistic level, it is perhaps easy perhaps to look at what that might translate to, but it is actually a proper audit of every facet of the services they provide to the community, and is about how they show leadership to the public, but also to businesses, on how far-reaching that should be. We in this place said that we want to be zero carbon and carbon-neutral by whatever date it was, and likewise our county and district councils—Warwick District Council is in my constituency—have really sought to show leadership, but are they actually going to be able to without the amendment?

[Bill Esterson]

That is a good question: what is possible if restrictions are in place because of international obligations in this area? I imagine the Minister will pick up on that in his response, but there are a number of important points in my hon. Friend’s comments. Yes, we must show leadership, but we should do that at a local and national level for businesses in this country. We should also show leadership elsewhere in the world, by setting our sights high regarding our obligations on the environment, labour, public health and support for SMEs. Through our procurement policy there are other areas of regulation and law where such things also apply.

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[Bill Esterson]

I am grateful for that offer. It is something that we have already done with Ministers, but I am happy to revisit it. It may be that revisiting it would be helpful now that some time has elapsed since the response to my case—I do not know about that of my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North—was received. It is important to recognise that we are trying to improve the situation so that we do not have such problems, whether they are authorised by Ministers or not. I am not going to stand here and say that the Minister and his friends authorised that kind of comment, but I am afraid that it happened, and I think the Minister’s offer is a good one. We need to find out why and ensure that it does not happen again, so I will take him up on that.

[Matt Western]

There is a broader point here. The geography may be one thing, but there may also be a cultural issue. I am not talking about the Government, but the machinery of government and the Departments. We recently found, through the crisis—this was a real revelation to me—that many businesses in my constituency and the region of the west midlands were being bypassed. They could have provided face masks, plastic visors and so much kit. Those were established manufacturing engineering businesses that had the capacity, the skills and the agility to do it, but for whatever reason—this is not a party political comment—cultural or otherwise, they were not looked at. It is almost as if we do not recognise the capacity of manufacturing in this country, but perhaps we should in the sense of procurement.

[Maria Caulfield (Lewes) (Con)]

On a point of order, Sir Graham. The debate is fascinating, but I ask your advice as to whether we are truly sticking to the scope of the Bill. I am aware that more than an hour has passed and we are on only the second group of amendments. Of course it is an important issue, but I would hate to reach a point next week where Opposition Members felt that we had not given proper scrutiny to the rest of the Bill.

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[Gareth Thomas]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Brady. I cannot do as much justice to these four amendments as my hon. Friend the Member for Sefton Central did from the Front Bench or my hon. Friend the Member for Putney did from the Back Benches, but I want to raise one or two slightly different points to try to underline some of the interventions I made. There is an understandable fear that at some future point the Government will roll back existing legislation that allows public authorities, the Government, devolved Administrations and local authorities to go beyond having to accept all the time the lowest price and instead to be able to think much more seriously about accepting quality concerns within contract offers. I am sure the Minister will have his most benevolent face on when he winds up and will say that the concerns that we have articulated, as have organisations such the TUC and good trade unions such as the GMB and Unison, are without any foundation. None the less, these concerns exist, because once we leave the protection of EU regulations, we will find that the provisions in the GPA are much more limited than those currently supplementing that under the EU procurement directive from 2014, which was transposed into UK domestic law under the Public Contracts Regulations 2015.

What these organisations understandably want to achieve is that little bit of extra protection against such an event happening, through the amendments that my hon. Friend the Member for Sefton Central has tabled. Indeed, they are seeking more ambition from the Government in terms of public procurement, and to move beyond the era in which big multinationals always win the big contracts. One thinks of the Sercos, the Carillions and the G4Ss, of which a little more anon.

I come back to the example that I gave in one of my earliest interventions on my hon. Friend: Hackney Community Transport, a local organisation that has managed to become much bigger in terms of the community transport offer that it makes. It depends on winning contracts from Transport for London to provide bus services, but has also been able to win contracts in many other local areas to provide transport services.

Hackney Community Transport provides a comparatively low offer because it has managed to get to a decent size where it can compete and, as my hon. Friend alluded to, it has a number of staff who are not just providing the service but thinking about how they win contracts. However, it has never lost its community roots. For the people of Hackney, it provides very cheap minibus hire and helps to train those from the local community who want to learn to drive a minibus. It employs ex-offenders and goes the extra mile, in a way that perhaps one of the corporate giants might not.

By comparison, Harrow Community Transport, which is a much smaller organisation but much valued by many of the most vulnerable people in my constituency—it uses its services to go to local day centres—struggles to survive. It has only one employee, and cannot imagine being able to win contracts from Transport for London given its present situation. There appears to be no sustained offer from central Government to change the situation for not only Harrow Community Transport but all those other community transport associations, or all those other local organisations, be they small and medium-sized businesses or small and medium-sized charities and co-operatives, that nevertheless provide commercial services that could be used effectively by public contracting organisations.

It is important that we build in that additional protection, so that procurement under the GPA does not inhibit local organisations that are determined to do something to provide good jobs with fair pay—not the kind of jobs that some individuals in my constituency have to do. Some of them have to work three jobs in order to make ends meet because the amount they are paid is so low. Businesses that want to help those who are disadvantaged in some way to get into employment must not be excluded as a result of our accession to the GPA. Amendments 24 to 27 help, very effectively, to give a little more protection against such exclusion.

I mentioned the Modern Slavery Act, which is a remarkable piece of legislation. The campaign for it was led by the Co-operative Group, to which I pay tribute for its work through its supply chain, and for the cross-party campaign that led to the Government passing that groundbreaking piece of legislation. Surely the last thing that we would want is not to build on it, and to inadvertently stop organisations that are committed to preventing modern slavery from getting into their supply chains winning the public contracts for which they bid.

My hon. Friend’s amendments seem to be about helping to prevent that from happening.

I served for a long time as chair of the Co-operative party. As a result, I have always wanted more co-ops growing and trading in the economy, and able to win government contracts, whether in local government, the NHS or central Government. I suspect that those of us of a certain generation remember Margaret Thatcher promising a world where owning shares would be as common as having a car. That grand promise of a share-owning democracy has long since disappeared, leaving economic power—according to some, certainly—concentrated in a few hands. That is why there are, I am pleased to say, organisations that champion the building of wealth in communities.

That brings me to the powerful demonstration that is taking place in Preston, where an inspirational council leader is seeking to use the public procurement tools that he and the local authority have available to them, working in partnership with other public bodies to try to contract locally. If we can reinforce those efforts that will surely help to tackle the anti-northern bias that we discussed earlier and allow imaginative council leaders to put extra support behind community organisations that want to do the right thing.

As to the failures of the Sercos, it is not only on test and trace that Serco’s performance has begun to be criticised. I remember it being accused and, so to speak, convicted, of false accounting and of breaching its responsibilities in handling radioactive waste. Carillion is another horror story, and the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee blamed the Government for outsourcing contracts based on the lowest price, and went on to say that that had caused public services to deteriorate. Surely, then, measures that would not stop us acceding to the GPA but would help us to get the best from our membership are sensible.

[Matt Western]

My hon. Friend makes some powerful points, but perhaps I may add some emphasis on public health and broaden that aspect of the argument. The emphasis on lowest price is mistaken. Perhaps we saw that with small and medium-sized enterprises—or more of a medium-sized to larger business in the case of De La Rue. However, on the public health side there has over the years been public anger, resentment and frustration at pressure for very low-cost meals to be provided in local authority schools, through companies such as Compass and others that source poor quality foods when they should think about the best value for public health and the health of children. That should be part of what we are talking about on this clause.

[Gareth Thomas]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. Part of the problem is that schools are not properly resourced. I am sure that he agrees about that. Other examples that we might point to are the difficulties that local authorities, whether Conservative or Labour-led, have had with refuse contracts. A number have had to bring contracts back in-house, or retender. Having gone for the lowest price, as my hon. Friend said, they have not got the value for money that local people rightly demand, and that councils expect from contracts.

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[Gareth Thomas]

There was once a Conservative Co-op movement, which in practice had only one member. Richard Balfe left our ranks, in a very misguided move, and set up the Conservative Co-op group. We appear to have three potential new members of such an organisation, which would be fantastic. Membership of the all-party parliamentary group for mutuals is definitely on offer to the three hon. Members who have intervened.

[Matt Western]

I tried to intervene a little earlier, and I thank my hon. Friend for giving way yet again. This serious, honest, and important point will probably be echoed across the room: the contract to provide food vouchers to schools over the Easter period and Whitsun was given to Edenred, which happens to be a French company, and an unproven business. I have had a huge number of issues with constituents who did not get vouchers on time, and those vouchers could have been provided by the Midcounties Co-operative, for example, which makes them—they are available. That could have been done locally, and I am sure it would have been done very cost-effectively.

[Gareth Thomas]

As ever, my hon. Friend makes a serious and important point about the contribution that co-operatives can make. If I may, I will return to the intervention from the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs, who asked me to extol the benefits of trade. I will certainly do that, but I do not think our country should sell itself short, which is why we have tabled these amendments. In a former life, in happier times, I served as Minister for Trade Policy. As a result, I am an enthusiast for the benefits of trade, but there are caveats to that enthusiasm. If the hon. Gentleman stays awake and enthused, he will listen to examples of our enthusiasm for trade, as well as some of our concerns about the Bill.

I will conclude my remarks by noting the significant potential for co-ops to help deal with some of the issues arising from our ageing society. By 2030, the number of people who need help to wash, feed, or clothe themselves in this country will have doubled to some 2 million. That will place heavy burdens on local authorities and national Governments who seek to procure the support to help those vulnerable people. With a bit of imagination from procurement managers, co-operatives could help to meet those needs, and I suggest that they would also provide a good service. That will require imagination and proper Government support and thinking about procurement, so that co-operatives, and small and medium-sized businesses—they are mentioned in amendment 26 —can benefit from those procurement opportunities. That is another reason why the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Sefton Central are spot on.