Procurement Bill [HL]

Lord Coaker Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 6th July 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

My Lords, I hope the Minister will reflect on his comments. At no stage did I criticise officials for not receiving a letter. This is a ministerial responsibility. A Minister gives an undertaking to write to a Member in Committee. A Minister brings forward and moves amendments in Committee which are pertinent to the issue I raised when the Minister said that he would write to me. I was not criticising any officials. If any criticism to be laid, it is against the Minister. I simply said that, in the absence of the letter he promised to send me, I am asking these questions for clarification. That is reasonable.

On exemptions, there has been some reference to legal services. I understand the point that has been raised about making sure that there is a distinction from Scottish legal services as appropriate, and I certainly support the Government doing that. However, my understanding is that, for some of the treaty suppliers, there are obligations under some of the treaties on the mutual recognition of professional and legal qualifications. My understanding is that the exemption for legal services under this Bill will cover those other areas where the mutual recognition of professional qualifications in carrying out certain legal services will also be excluded. I understand that a body would be unable to procure legal services that are separate from those exempted, but they are then covered in other areas of professional qualifications. This will leave certain gaps in our treaty obligations.

I reviewed the Australia agreement on the carve-out on legal services. It is broadly the same, so I understand where the Government are coming from as far as these exemptions are concerned, but it is not exactly the same. Perhaps the Minister could give some further explanation as to what is likely to be allowed under the provision of legal services by certain providers of legal services that have mutual qualification recognition, because the position on legal services is still uncertain. If the Minister could respond to those points, I would be grateful.

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

My Lords, I start by thanking the noble Lord, Lord True, those who have been working with him and the officials for the briefing we received this morning and for listening to the anger, frankly, that there was on Monday about the situation. We were where we were; we are grateful to the Minister for doing what he could to degroup the amendments and sort things out as best he could. Clearly, there are still a number of issues, and many of us are still struggling to put together the various mountains of paper we have to try to make sense of it.

I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, on her extremely important Amendment 11A. I must say that, in my reading of Schedule 2, I had not picked that issue up, which shows part of the problem—I know that the Minister accepts this—of not having enough time. The noble Baroness’s point was on decisive influence and what that means. As the noble Lord, Lord Fox, said, the definition of particular words and phrases bedevils us at the present time. I pray in aid because, later on, I will point out one word in a couple of phrases that I think makes all the difference; I hope the Committee will bear with me and recognise that I am not being trivial—changing one word would make a significant difference to the meaning in the Bill. As well as pointing something out to us, the noble Baroness has made an extremely important point about what “decisive influence” means in paragraphs 2(2) and 2(3) of Schedule 2.

I would add to what the noble Baroness said. This is really important because is it not only

“a decisive influence on the activities of the person”;

it is also “directly or indirectly”. You then really get into the question of what on earth it means. To be frank, when you get into “decisive influence” and “indirectly”, it becomes extremely difficult. Again, I thank the noble Baroness. Like her, I look forward to listening to the answer the Minister gives with respect to that.

I agree with most of the remarks made by the noble Lords, Lord Purvis and Lord Fox, and others. I have decided not to read out my notes, because I want to try to get to the heart of this for the benefit of those who read our proceedings. If I get this wrong, the Minister will need to correct me. We need to understand where we are and what is happening.

My understanding is that the current procurement regime—not the regime envisaged by the Procurement Bill—operates under the existing Public Contracts Regulations 2015. Because we left the EU, the original Procurement Bill sought to transpose the 2015 regulations into British law. Unfortunately, in doing that, the Bill made a series of errors, and in particular around the Teckal exemption—however it is pronounced; I do not have the same mastery of languages as the noble Lord, Lord Moylan. That exemption was not actually in the original drafting. The Local Government Association and all the other bodies were horrified—from what I have seen of the statements they have made to the Government—because it meant that many of the things they were able to do under the 2015 regulations with the Teckal exemption would no longer be allowed and they would have to change their procurement processes. I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, who gave the very good example of the transport initiative, of which he was proud, but the LGA and other bodies were worried that these sorts of arrangements would not be operational in the same way as was drafted in the original Procurement Bill.

The Committee will correct me if I am wrong, but this is the million-dollar question for me, and the reason I abandoned my notes: do the Government amendments in this group, led by Amendment 10, mean—as the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, other noble Lords, the LGA and many other organisations which have made representations to us are concerned it does—that the 2015 regulations have been transposed into the amended version of the Bill, along with the Teckal exemption to those regulations? That is what people will be looking for, because British law, as it will stand when this Bill becomes an Act, will mean that they can operate the various arrangements that they have either vertically with an entity in themselves, or horizontally with other local authorities or bodies.

If we look across the country, we see that in all the areas in which we live—including, I presume, Wales; I am not sure about Scotland, about which the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, may wish to say something—there are hundreds upon hundreds of models of procurement that have been adopted and worked on to deliver services in the way that a local authority, body or entity has decided to follow. The Minister will know this better than me, because of his experience. What they will be looking at is whether the Government’s amendments mean that their concerns have been met. That is why I decided to put down my amendment. I cannot debate law as well as many other noble Lords, but if I were someone from the outside looking at this, I would ask whether this means that I can carry on procuring in the way that I have been able to procure previously. That was my concern with the way that the Bill was originally drafted. That is the million-dollar question for the Minister.

--- Later in debate ---

I was asked about the Scottish legal point. I apologise, but I am not in a position to answer that specifically today—maybe it should be added to the letter which the noble Lord asked for on Monday, which is on the way. If I may, I will take that away. It is an important point that both noble Lords alluded to regarding what might happen in the future. I do not have access currently to the legal advice which would enable me to answer that, but I undertake to write to noble Lords, in common with all the other things that come up in Committee. I will not wait until the end of Committee to send letters, but there was just a particular point of pressure over the last 24 hours.

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

I am sorry to do this, but may I pick up on the point the Minister was making to the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, about the letter he will write? The answer to the question that the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, posed is quite significant. It would be interesting for the whole Committee to know whether Regulation 12 of the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 applies in a way that would allow the noble Lord’s example organisation to continue as it is now, when the Procurement Bill becomes an Act. I apologise for intervening a bit late.

[Lord True (Con)]

Yes, indeed. I totally take that point. It is good practice, and I hope it will be our practice in this Committee, to circulate to all noble Lords who take part. I was not proposing to send a billet-doux to just the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, or my noble friend Lord Moylan and not spread it round. I will address that, but I repeat that it is our expectation and hope that local authorities will be able to do as they did before. That is the fundamental point and I will pursue this in that spirit. In that light, I hope the noble Baroness will be prepared to not move her amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I hope the Minister is impressed by the cross-party consensus on a number of things on this issue. At the moment, this is very much a skeleton Bill. The demands to put more in the Bill come from all parts and relate to a number of different clauses. I hope that he will be able to respond outside Committee, between Committee and Report, to consider whether the Government might be able to come back to satisfy some of these requests with appropriate language. As we have already stressed, the language is already there in a number of government publications; it is just not in the Bill. I look forward to his response.

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

My Lords, here we go. This is an important part of the Bill dealing with process, and some things have been incredibly difficult to understand. Now we get to things that we can feel. We are talking about purchasing, buying and procurement. We are saying that if we are going to do that, we have a real opportunity as a Parliament—and the Government have a real opportunity, to be fair, but it is going to be driven by some of the amendments here—to use procurement to produce the country and society that we want. Many Governments and local authorities have failed to use the power of that purchasing to drive social change. That is what these amendments are about. I think it is sometimes important to set the context for the various amendments here. I suspect that to an extent there will be a bit of a clash on that because, to be honest, some of us take a position that the free market should be interfered with more than it is. Others take the view that the free market will sort these things out because it will. That is a view, and I think there will be a clash.

Some of these amendments should be in the Bill. The Government will say what they are seeking to achieve. The amendments in this group on the pre-procurement phase are to legislate to enforce it and to make it a reality rather than an aspiration—something that we think would be a good thing to happen. I wanted to say that. I shall wax lyrical at different times to set the context of amendments because otherwise they get lost. Many of the points that have been made on amendments are very important. If I were the Government, I would make more of them. To be frank, the Government may need a bit of advice at the moment. I would not be the person to give it to them, but if I were doing that I would make more of it as a Government, saying that this is what the Government are seeking to achieve, and they will be driven by people in this Committee, and no doubt elsewhere, to go further.

I have a couple of things specifically on the amendments. The noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, will be pleased because this is about a word—I warned them. In Clause 14, which is about the pre-procurement phase, the word “may” is used on a number of occasions. We are discussing what should be in planned procurement notices, which is Clause 14, what should be in preliminary market engagement, which is Clause 15, and what should be in preliminary market engagement notices, which is Clause 16. Those clauses do not insist that the notices are published but say that they “may” be published. Why not have “will” or “must”? The word “must” is used in other clauses in this part, so somewhere along the line, whoever drafted the Bill said, “We will have ‘must’, but in these clauses, we will have ‘may.’” I am always told that this does not make any difference and that the intention is to do that, but why leave it to chance when many of the amendments in this group, ably spoken to by different members of the Committee, are dependent upon a planned procurement notice being published, a preliminary market engagement taking place or a preliminary market engagement notice being published? The amendment could be passed, but it would not make any difference because it only “may” be done, not “must” be done. I hope that is as conflated and convoluted as I get and that the Committee takes the point. I think it would be helpful to the Committee to understand why the word “may” is used in certain clauses and not “must”.

All sorts of really good amendments in this group have been presented to us. I want to make a couple of points about them. My noble friend Lord Hunt, the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, and the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, made a point about the role of charities and small businesses, as did the noble Lord, Lord Lansley. Everybody agrees that we have to do more to help small businesses, that we cannot let the big players dominate, that we have to get new entrants and to support them, and asks why we cannot grow business in this area and do more about young people trying to start something. Here is the opportunity. Here is the chance to use procurement to drive the sort of change and make the social difference that we want it to make. The noble Lord, Lord Lansley, is absolutely right that we should use procurement to do it. Other noble Lords who have spoken have made the same point, so it goes all the way through.

The noble Lord, Lord Wallace, is absolutely right about the delivery model for outsourcing that he talked about. One of the disgraces of the last 20 or 30 years is the way in which some things have been forced to be outsourced. I am not an ideological puritan about this; I understand that sometimes it might be the right thing to do—I have got in trouble with my own party for saying that. It is the compulsion to do it that is the problem; where it defies common sense, that is the problem. In those circumstances, the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, and those who support him are quite right to address that.

I was also particularly pleased with the noble Lord’s proposed new subsection (1)(c) in Amendment 81, which I thought he might have emphasised. It talks about outsourcing being able to be brought back in where it is not delivering what it said it was going to deliver. That has been the plague of many things: when something is outsourced and it seems that it is impossible to do anything about it. That is what the amendment seeks to do—another noble Lord in the debate made the point about what you do in those circumstances.

I will just say quickly that I support what the noble Baronesses, Lady Worthington, Lady Verma, Lady Boycott and Lady Parminter, and other noble Lords said on climate change and environmental protection. We need to wake up to this. People say that people are not interested in politics, but they are interested in climate change and environmental degradation, and they cannot understand why something is not being done—why billions of pounds are not used to drive change. This is a real opportunity to do that, and I hope that the Government will take it. No doubt the Government will say that they have all sorts of policies around climate change—Acts, regulations and other things—and that of course they support tackling it. Who does not support trying to do something about climate change and environmental degradation? Everyone supports it. But sometimes the actual will is not there to deliver it through practical policy which will make a real difference. That is the point of the amendment before us.

Lastly, on my noble friend Lord Hunt’s point about disability, I cannot remember the figure from the RNIB briefing—I had a quick look but I cannot remember what it was—but millions of people were potentially impacted.

[A noble Lord]

It was 14 million.

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

Some 14 million people were potentially impacted according to the briefing that we had on the limitations on access ability and all those sorts of things. That should be a wake-up call to us as well, and again, it is something that we can use. I thank my noble friend Lord Hunt and those who have supported him for bringing that forward.

I will finish there. This is a wake-up call to this Committee. This debate should be in the Chamber. This is a massive debate about billions of pounds which can be used to generate social change and to change the direction of the country in a way that there is probably a consensus about in many ways. Sometimes in Committee we forget how important it is. We are legislating in a way that will have an impact on the lives of millions of people in this country—and people across Europe and so on, without going into it too much. The impact is enormous, and that is what we are doing in this Room, and why we are bothering to stay here on a Thursday night without finishing.

[Noble Lords]

It is Wednesday.

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

Is it, my Lords? I am that excited and I have been speaking that long—is it still Wednesday?

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, if that is an offer to come back tomorrow and carry on, I do not know how popular that will be.

There are many things that I like about the noble Lord opposite. First, he is very likeable and fun to be with. Secondly, he has a long connection with the great city of Nottingham, which he will know is something that I share. Thirdly, there is what Mr Baldwin would call his awful frankness. However, there is something of a philosophical divide that will come through in this discussion. I will reply in detail to the amendments, but what we have heard from the noble Lord is that the Labour Government that he envisages would want to use the powers under this Bill to constrain individual private companies that sought to provide public services to conform to the will of whatever the Labour Party’s wishes in power might be.

Procurement Bill [HL]

Lord Coaker Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 4th July 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

My Lords, I shall speak to my Amendment 19 and comment very briefly, because it was a pleasure to follow my noble friend, simply to emphasise the point that he and my noble friend Lord Scriven made about local authorities. I want to add just two other elements of that and combine it with a comment, since we started on this group with the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, about universities. In the case of my former constituency, Heriot-Watt University was part of a number of consortia with other universities and other organisations, which included charitable trusts, research trusts and other groups. Since they became procurement bodies themselves, it would be very useful for the Government to be very clear as to how this Act will consider an institution as a procuring body, including as part of a consortium of which the partners are not covered by this legislation.

On the point about local authorities, I would be grateful if the Minister would clarify for those local authorities that work cross-border. There is the borderlands consortium of local authorities in England and Scotland. In my understanding of how the Bill is drafted, that consortium would not come under the Bill because only local authorities, or local authorities in Scotland that operate on fully reserved matters, would do so. The consortium does not operate on fully reserved matters but it is a single consortium that receives a borderland deal from the Treasury and is a procuring authority. It would be very helpful if the Minister would clarify the status, under the legislation, of the border consortium of local authorities.

The purpose behind Amendment 19 is to develop that probing and to ask for consideration of the treaty state suppliers and the international agreements. What comes under the terminology of international agreements? The noble Lord, Lord Lansley, and I have raised questions on many occasions about what the Government consider to be a treaty for international agreement purposes. I understand entirely that the Government’s purpose behind this legislation is flexibility, but also transparency. I support those, particularly the transparency angle. We therefore need to look carefully at the areas that are exempted.

The noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, raised the point about ARIA; I will not intervene in the mutual relationship between her and my noble friend Lord Fox on the relationship with ARIA, and I know that UK Research and Innovation is not linked with ARIA. However, I found it interesting that UK Research and Innovation is included in our trade agreement with Australia under the procurement chapter by virtue of it being a listed body. If we need to look at which bodies will be included in this legislation, there are exhaustive lists—it says: “This list is exhaustive”—in our trade agreements, which are now in scope of this legislation but which many Members may think are not. For example, at 6.9, UK Research and Innovation is included.

Most interestingly, the Bill excludes Government Communications Headquarters, but it is included in the list of bodies in our FTA with Australia under the procurement chapter. I do not know how they will interact. We will come to this when we come to the elements of international trade, but where does GCHQ sit as regards procurement? We are obliged to cover it under the Australia FTA but we are seeking to exclude it under the Bill. I simply do not know the answer, so I look forward to the Minister clarifying that point.

The amendment on international agreements is to clarify what the Government consider an international agreement. Paragraph 19 of Schedule 2 states:

“A contract awarded under a procedure specified in an international agreement of which the United Kingdom is a signatory relating to … the implementation of a joint project between the signatories to that agreement.”


That could be extraordinarily wide, and if it includes agreements which are not under FTAs it could be enormously wide.

I just need to look at two contemporaneous cases under memoranda of understanding. These are agreements which the Government say are underpinned, with commitments to honour them. One is the Rwanda MoU on immigration—I visited the centre in Kigali two weeks ago. There is procurement that could be under that agreement, whether for the aircraft which have been brought from Spain to fly individuals out there, or indeed the Hope Guest House Ltd, a private limited company in Kigali that is to be the reception centre for these people and which I visited myself. I asked the authorities there: “If it is a limited company, how do I know what the details are—the terms and conditions?” They told me that it was under a one-year rolling contract but I have no idea how it was procured, and the same goes for the British side. This is a joint agreement with joint procurement, and I believe that it should be transparent, but under the Bill the Government are seeking to exclude that.

There are a number of different areas. There are international higher education partnership agreements. Even if the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, is successful with his amendment, it would be rendered useless under paragraph 19 of Schedule 2 because the Government will be able to say that it is under an international higher education agreement. We have signed between 15 and 18 agreements with China on preferential market access, including investments through UK pension funds, which potentially come within scope of this as well. We have an investment partnership with the UAE, the details of which have not been published; I have not been able to find them and the Library has asked the DIT for the text but it has not been forthcoming. However, these are potentially joint procurement agreements. Some may be beneficial; others I look at with a cautious eye. Depending on how they are defined and on how the Government wish to use them, the transparency elements of procurement could be bypassed because of paragraph 19 of Schedule 2. Therefore, I would like the Government to explain.

In closing, because it links to a number of international agreements and has been previously referenced on treaties, I recognise the 24 treaties listed in Schedule 20, but the impact assessment relates only to 20, so I do not know why there is that discrepancy. It would be helpful if the Minister could clarify the discrepancy between the two.

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lady Hayman after her remarks. I apologise to the Committee for being a few minutes late; I was unavoidably detained on other business. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord True, for dealing with a really difficult situation with—as we might all agree—his normal courtesy. I think it was the best that could be done in the circumstances; withdrawing government Amendment 1 allowed us to move to this group of amendments. We all appreciate his offer of continuing discussions in the next day or so to consider how we take all this forward. It would be remiss to not start with thanks to the Minister for that, otherwise the Committee would have been a complete and utter catastrophe. As we can see, however, with this group of amendments we have got on to the real purpose of the Committee, which is to get to the real detail, as seen in the various contributions made by all noble Lords. All the amendments put forward have asked very reasonable questions, which seek to clarify the Government’s intentions. I shall certainly make those points in the few minutes that I speak for.

I start by saying that I was really interested in the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, because it goes to the heart of the issue. You can read “pecuniary” in all sorts of ways. I looked it up with the help of my noble friend Lady Hayman and it has to do with money, so I was quite pleased to read that—from a non-legislative point of view—because I thought it meant that it was about the supply of the contracts, the pecuniary interests would not matter and it was a “standards in public life” type of approach, but of course it is not. The amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, has clarified that for me. What “pecuniary” means in this context is a really interesting point: why are the Government including it and why would the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, not be an improvement? Again, the details of some of these amendments are really worthwhile points to look at.

I wanted to raise some of the points that the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, started to get to in the debate on whether Clause 2 and Schedule 2 should stand part. There is also the question of where Schedule 1 takes us. The noble Lord, Lord Fox, will be interested in this, having asked who will police this. The Government use the term “estimated value” in Clause 2 and, to be fair to them, that is very important for this aspect of a public contract. Clause 3 deals with how estimated value is worked out; then, in Schedule 3, it is done by regulation. Schedule 3 lays out how the estimated value may be set, so I will not go through it. What I could not find out—a point also made by the noble Lord, Lord Fox—is who ensures that it is properly done; in other words, that the estimated value is a proper estimated value and that the system laid out in Schedule 3 works. If I understood the Minister, he said that it is a matter for the Minister—a matter for the Crown. Could he just clarify who polices this? Who ensures that the estimated value is indeed a proper estimated value? That would be helpful to the Committee.

Procurement Bill [HL]

Lord Coaker Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 25th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

My Lords, I start by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Wallace. It is a privilege to follow him and say that I agree with much of what he had to say and the way he said it. I also thank the Minister for the customary way in which he introduced the Bill and tried to explain the various parts of it—I think the whole House was grateful to him for doing that. The thrust of the debate has shown that most noble Lords are basically in favour of much of the Bill and the direction in which it is going. However, we seek to improve and develop it, and to test what the Government really mean in certain aspects of it. I hope that the Minister will take my remarks in that context.

To the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, I say that I support the Government’s endeavour. I guess that makes the Minister a semi-capitalist, whereas I am a full-blown anti-capitalist in what I am going to say, so I apologise to the noble Lord in advance for that. I hope he will manage to stay in his seat and not get too upset by some of the things I am going to say. It appears to me that, so far as he is concerned, his own Government are treading down a dangerous path—whereas, for me, they are very much treading down a welcome path.

My noble friend Lord Whitty hit the nail on the head when he said that the importance of all this is that law sets the context, the priorities for a Government and the way in which you would wish a Government to act. This is the importance of the Bill before us. As my noble friend Lady Hayman pointed out in her excellent opening speech, this is the opportunity for us as a country—but also for this Government, pushed and supported in many ways by many of us in this House—to actually change direction. I think that is what the country wants. Coming out of the pandemic, the country does not want a return to things as they were and to business as usual. I believe that that is why the Government have done this. Of course, they have been consulting on it, but they mentioned it in the last Queen’s Speech in 2021 and did not do anything. Now they have mentioned it in 2022 and come forward with it—so I think they themselves recognise that there is a need to act. The public want something better, we want something better, and now is the time for us all to move forward.

On the £300 billion-worth of public spending, I would be interested to learn what the actual figure is with the exemptions. If the Minister cannot give it to us now, can he write to us with the actual figure: is it £300 billion or will it be less than that with the exemptions and so on that are included in the Bill? If we accept that figure, £300 billion-worth of public spending can be used to drive forward the sort of country and businesses we want. As many noble Lords in this debate have said, this is the way we can move forward and the direction we can take. Whether it be on labour, climate, levelling up, anti-poverty or anything else, this is a real opportunity for us to change direction. That is what is at the heart of this Second Reading debate: have the Government gone far enough, could they go further and what other steps could they take in order to move forward?

The Government set out six principles in their Green Paper—

“the public good, value for money, transparency, integrity, fair treatment of suppliers and non-discrimination”—

so it is somewhat disappointing to find that, when we come to the actual Bill, we have four factors and no principles. I think it was the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, who mentioned the importance of Clauses 11 and 12 taken together, where there are objectives but no principles. What we mean by that will be a subject for debate by all of us in Committee. Clause 11 is fundamental to the whole operation of the Bill. What are we going to require businesses to do? What are we going to expect of them? What will the public procurement push them to do?

At some point the Minister will also need to clarify Clause 12 and what the national procurement policy statement will be. My understanding is that the existing one will go and a new one will be produced following the passage of the Bill. I think we need to know what is said on that.

Many noble Lords mentioned the need for us to consider things such as social, environmental and labour clauses. That is why Clause 18 is really important. As the noble Baronesses, Lady Bennett and Lady Parminter, and very powerfully my noble friend Lady Young pointed out, the move from having the most economically advantageous tender to taking out the reference to “economic” and having in its place the “most advantageous tender” gives us the opportunity to include social and environmental issues. As my noble friends Lord Davies and Lord Hendy pointed out, we can look at labour proposals with respect to that and demand certain things of businesses, because that is the sort of model and the sort of change we want.

My noble friend Lord Mendelsohn, from his experience as a businessman, and others pointed out the importance of this for small businesses. What will it mean for them? How will it help them? As the noble Lord, Lord Fox, asked, how will the new digital portal work in a way that gives business access to the sorts of things the Government want? What about the late-payment provisions in the Bill? How will they help? How will it work? There are all sorts of questions to be answered, and obviously we can discuss the details in Committee.

Transparency is everything. You cannot do anything without transparency—without knowing what is happening and what is going on. As my noble friend Lady Young pointed out, we need the data to be able to do that. Otherwise, it will be like the analogy with football—not liking football and not even knowing the result because nobody has given it to you, so you cannot tell who has won or lost.

One of the really important things is how all this will be enforced. In the Green Paper there was a procurement review unit, which has now been downgraded to an “appropriate authority”, with no clarity on what that means. As far as I can understand from reading Part 10, the appropriate authority will be able to make recommendations and conduct an investigation, but there is no way that those recommendations, as a result of any investigation, will be binding. The Minister will correct me if I have this wrong, but if they are not binding, what difference does it make? How will the new appropriate authority that will enforce all these regulations work in practice and ensure that what we intend and want from the Bill actually happens?

How will we ensure that the benefits outlined in the Procurement Bill spill over into defence? Clause 105 deals with single-source contracts, which are worth approaching £10 billion. How will that work? As I understand it, there will be new secondary legislation to deal with that. All the Bill does is to introduce primary legislation to allow changes to be made to secondary legislation, which will deal with the single-source contracts that the Ministry of Defence operates in certain circumstances. I do not understand what difference that will make, and at some point we will need to understand that.

There is a huge problem with defence spending, which has bedevilled the department for a number of years. The noble Baroness, Lady Smith, and my noble friend Lord Hunt spoke about that. To take one example, 29 Ajax vehicles have been delivered to the Government at a cost of £3.5 billion so far. There are more on the way. We are supposed to have 569, which were supposed to have been delivered four or five years ago, so there is a huge problem around this. We need to know how the Procurement Bill will improve defence procurement and all that.

Secondary legislation is a huge problem. Large numbers of regulations are set out in Clause 110, so while we have the principle that we will debate and discuss, much of this will be done by secondary legislation. That will be a real problem because the devil will be in the detail. Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, mentioned some of the problems with secondary legislation in respect of this Bill, including how it will interrelate and cross over with the Health and Care Act. He was right to point that out for the benefit of noble Lords.

I want to talk a little about Part 7. The noble Lords, Lord Alton and Lord Wigley, and the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, all mentioned the importance of procurement in the context of our international obligations. I do not believe that the British public, or the vast majority of decent people, would want anybody to be procuring from companies or countries where there are huge human rights violations. We are all realistic about this. We all know that it is very difficult, but it cannot be right that, where we are absolutely certain that there are human rights violations, it is business as usual. I hope that when we discuss Part 7 with the Minister in Committee, it will become clearer that the requirement for our international obligations to have a greater human rights dimension—in who we procure from and what we procure—is a really important part of the Bill.

In conclusion, we have approximately £300 billion of public expenditure. The days of the lowest-cost rules must be over. That is the demand from the citizens of this country. Other factors can be, and should be, taken into account. The Bill is a huge opportunity and the Government have grasped it, but many of us are going to push them further for a change to how procurement works—to rework it and remake it in a way that reflects modern business practice, the modern economy and the modern society that people want. It is an opportunity that we have to take.