Draft Defence and Security Public Contracts (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019

Peter Grant Excerpts

Monday 11th February 2019 General Committees

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

I apologise, Mr Evans; I might have thought that somebody on the Conservative Benches would want to say something about the draft regulations, but there we go. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship.

I echo the concerns raised by the hon. Member for Caerphilly about how we got into this position. We are now counting down in days rather than weeks and months to Brexit day, yet we still do not have a legislative framework in place to make it work, and we still do not know whether there will be a deal. As the hon. Gentleman said, a lot of this is clearly Government scaremongering to get Members through the right Lobby, at a date yet to be decided, because the prospect of no deal is just so terrifying.

The same comments could apply to a lot of the legislation that is being considered by Delegated Legislation Committees just now. Next week’s recess has had to be cancelled, not because major legislation needs to be debated on the Floor of the House, but because the Government have run down the clock without allowing enough time to lay secondary legislation before Parliament —an indication that their competence in government is disastrously lacking.

It was interesting to hear the Minister speaking about control over procurement reverting to the United Kingdom. Brexit was not supposed to be about bringing control back to the United Kingdom; it was supposed to be about bringing it back to the United Kingdom Parliament. I see no role at all for the UK Parliament among the significant powers that will now be vested in the Secretary of State. Those powers are currently vested in the European Commission, which is held to account in a way in which individual Secretaries of State in this place are not. Perhaps the Government are trying to make it look as if the European Commission’s powers will instead, in a like-for-like swap, be exercised by a Secretary of State. However, an individual Secretary of State is subject to less transparency and parliamentary democratic oversight than the European Commission.

That is particularly the case with defence contracts. The two big excuses that are always given to keep the contents of a contract completely hushed up—at the time and sometimes for years or decades afterwards—are commercial confidentiality and national security. When we get contracts of millions or even billions of pounds where commercial confidentiality and national security can both be played, it is very easy to shut down transparency. It should be no surprise, therefore, that defence contracts form a large proportion of those that should never have gone down the road we took. I hope that the measure is not laying of foundations for yet more scandals, whereby a contractor is not competent and a very expensive buy-out is required in order to get somebody who is fit for purpose and able to do the job.

I welcome the Minister’s admission—if I copied his words down correctly—that the Government currently allow bids from suppliers from outside the European Union. That will come as news to people in Scotland, because five years ago they were telling us that they would not even accept bids from Scotland if we were not part of the United Kingdom. I am pleased that that has been laid to rest, at last.

That is how it should be, because we are purchasing essential equipment for our armed forces and they deserve the best that we can provide. It should not necessarily be about who can provide it at the cheapest price; it should be about who can provide, within the required time, the best equipment and that it will be reliable in intense, testing conditions. Soldiers have died in Iraq because their equipment was not up to standard. We cannot allow that to happen again.

To the extent that the draft regulations fill a gap that the Government have chosen to create in our domestic legislation, I certainly do not oppose them. I am concerned, however, that they simply concentrate further powers among individual Secretaries of State, who historically this Parliament has found extremely difficult to hold to account. I wonder whether in 10 or 15 years’ time we will be looking at a lot more, and even worse, examples than recent ones. Defence procurement decisions have clearly not been made purely in the interest of the defence of these islands and our citizens, but for some other reason that had to be kept under lock and key for the next 20 years.

As I have said, I do not oppose the draft regulations, but the fact that it is necessary to bring them to Committee so close to Brexit day is an admission of incompetence—and nothing less—by the Government.