My Lords, Amendment 22 is in a group of rather different amendments, most of which have more meat in them than my amendment. It is a probing amendment to paragraph 4 of Schedule 3, which contains a provision to ensure that contracts are not fragmented in order to escape the value limits that govern some of the procurement rules. The basic rule in paragraph 4 is that the contracting authority has to add up the value of all the contracts if they could reasonably have been supplied under one contract.
However, paragraph 4(2) allows the contracting authority not to do this if it has “good reasons”. Amendment 22 proposes to remove this in order to find out exactly what the Government intend to allow contracting authorities to do and to probe why they have not been more specific in the Bill. At first sight, paragraph 4(2) is a massive let-out clause, enabling authorities to avoid aggregating contracts. I look forward to my noble friend the Minister’s explanation. I beg to move.