Trade (Australia and New Zealand) Bill (Third sitting)

Debate between Nia Griffith and Bill Esterson

Committee stage
Tuesday 18th October 2022 Public Bill Committees

[Bill Esterson]

My hon. Friend is making the case very well about the need to involve the farming and agriculture industry in trade agreement scrutiny. Was she struck, like I was, by the comments from Jonnie Hall of NFU Scotland about “retrospective scrutiny” and the fact that this weakened the role of the Trade and Agriculture Commission? Does she share my view that the evidence we heard is exactly why we need the kind of analysis referred to in amendment 7 before the regulations are implemented?

[Dame Nia Griffith]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. The whole point is that there should have been much better consultation, either directly with the farming unions or by their representatives in the Scottish and Welsh Governments who have raised these points and have very good, close relations with the stakeholder groups in their respective nations. As my hon. Friend rightly says, a number of concerns were raised by the NFU. The whole point of having consultation and impact assessments is that those concerns can be properly documented and we do not rush into the legislation produced by clause 1 and leave people in a more difficult predicament.

Trade (Australia and New Zealand) Bill (First sitting)

Debate between Nia Griffith and Bill Esterson

Committee stage
Wednesday 12th October 2022 Public Bill Committees

[Dame Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)]

Q In the past, there has been criticism from some in your organisation that there was no SME chapter in the treaties. Do you feel that the Bill provides sufficient protections and the mechanisms that you would wish to see to give that ongoing support to small businesses?

Lucy Monks: Yes. There are SME chapters in the Australia and New Zealand agreements. If we had a concern with the Bill and the issue around procurement, it would be that, as I said, small businesses tend to be cut out of the procurement process even in our own country, so both the FTA and anything that impacts procurement legislation need to be done in a way that supports small businesses. I am not as concerned about competition from Australian and New Zealand small businesses as I am about the ability for larger businesses to take opportunities that could be sitting there for smaller businesses.

Separate from that, for a long time there was a conversation between various Government Departments about trying to improve the central Government procurement system, not only for small businesses, but generally in its ability to encourage greater social value through public spending, basically. A couple of years ago, the Government finally published a social value model, part of which is supposed to be about encouraging engagement of small businesses both in the direct procurement system and as part of that supply chain. Obviously, larger businesses can go and bid for contracts, but they kind of have to promise that they will engage with x, y, z number of small businesses in delivering bits and pieces.

The Government have promised to keep monitoring how that model is implemented. I would ask that we keep monitoring how these measures are implemented in terms of both the ability for small businesses to actually access those procurement markets in Australia and New Zealand, and the impact of larger businesses that are going forward and trying to procure those projects and their ability to bring along UK small businesses as part of the process.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

Good morning, Lucy. You talked about the potential challenge of larger Australian and New Zealand businesses winning UK Government contracts. Is there anything in the legislation you would like to see amended to support small UK businesses in winning Government contracts when facing that international competition?