My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Brixton, who I think is seeking to achieve the same goals as two amendments in this group to which I have
attached my name: Amendment 43, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, and Amendment 57, in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Fox. I will focus on those amendments because I have done my best to get round their technical detail.
Having listened to the powerful introductory speeches that were made, I noted that the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, highlighted the issues with the Australian trade deal. It is a pity, therefore, that this Committee is taking place at the same time as the Australian trade deal is being debated in the Chamber; some joined-up thinking might have ensured that people were able to participate in both debates. However, that is perhaps a very large aspiration that we can all work towards.
I want to focus on perhaps the most crucial provision, which is subsection (1)(a) in the new clause proposed in Amendment 43, which refers to,
“promoting the public good, by having regard to the delivery of strategic national priorities including economic, social, environmental and public safety priorities”—
although I think I might prefer the wording “public health”, which is perhaps broader than “public safety”, for reasons that I will come to in a second. That is something that we might consider in future. However, the Government are already signed up to those principles, at least theoretically, in everything that they do because, like the rest of the world, they are signed up to the sustainable development goals. I cite the paper from the Cabinet Office and the FCDO Implementing the Sustainable Development Goals, dated 15 July 2021, which says:
“The UK is committed to the delivery of the sustainable development goals. The most effective way we have to do this is by ensuring that the Goals are fully embedded in planned activity of each Government department”.
Now one might think that making legislation is a planned activity of a government department. However, that is a very centralised view because it refers only to central government spending and is not focused on other spending. Surely, if we are going to deliver the sustainable development goals, they have to be embedded right across the broad breadth of spending. Essentially, Amendment 43 broadens out and attempts to deliver something that the Government are fundamentally, nationally and internationally, signed up to do.
I note further that the Cabinet Office report states that “all signatories” are
“expected to … deliver them domestically.”
However, NGO studies demonstrate that the UK is not on track to deliver a single sustainable development goal. Surely this Procurement Bill is a crucial mechanism for delivering those sustainable development goals of economic, social and environmental advance, meeting people’s basic needs while looking after our natural world and ensuring that we have a natural world for the future. I suggest that Amendment 43, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman—and Amendment 57, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, comes at this in a different way—is absolutely crucial, as it would put the principles of the sustainable development goals, to which the Government are signed up, on the face of the Bill.
Let me also address subsection (2) of the new clause proposed by Amendment 43, which states:
“If a contracting authority considers that it is unable to act in accordance with any of these principles in a particular case, it must—”
essentially, publish a report and take reasonable steps to ensure that it is not discriminating. When I considered signing the amendment, I worried about this because I thought that, surely, these are principles we should be delivering on. However, of course, we all know the practical reality is that many organisations procuring essential services simply do not have enough money to do what they need to do.
This is where we come to the value for money point of Amendment 57. I was thinking of putting this in practical terms, because much of what we are talking about here is technical and abstract. Think of the very common fable in which a poor person, who has only £10 in their pocket, is forced to buy a cheap pair of shoes. Then every three months, he is forced to buy a new cheap pair of shoes. A wealthy person, who has £100 in their pocket, can buy a pair of shoes that lasts for 10 years. So of course, in the end, the poor person ends up spending vastly more on shoes than the wealthy person, because they had no choice. So, given our current situation, maybe we need Part 2, but we have to look at whether this is a bigger, broader problem, beyond even the realms of this Bill. None the less, this group of amendments demonstrates that the Bill is fairly deficient in its current form. This cannot be an area for a framework Bill.
I will briefly mention another issue that is important and I commend the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, for his amendment. We are seeing increasing levels of automation in many aspects of judgments—the human judgment being taken out and AI and algorithms being put in its place. There is a great deal of evidence demonstrating that the way they are being developed and the data on which they are based often fit the old adage of “garbage in, garbage out”. We need to make sure that any automation of these processes is not discriminatory. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, pointed out that anti-discrimination elements are entirely lacking from any provisions in the Bill at the moment; proposed new subsection (1)(f) provides these as well.