My Lords, I thank your Lordships for a really interesting debate. A lot of what has been said about support for small and medium-sized enterprises, social enterprises and voluntary organisations is something that the Government also support and, through the Bill, have been trying to support even more. After we finish Committee, we need to meet interested noble Lords and talk more about these issues because they are important to the Committee, as I can tell, but also to the Government. I make no promises, but we should be using all the knowledge in the Committee as we discuss it further.
In that context, I will answer a few questions. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, that I am sorry if I did not quite get to the interface with the Health and Care Bill. I will try to get a bit further but I am afraid I do not think I can go as far as she wants. All public authorities will be covered by the Procurement Bill in relation to health except those that will come under the regulations made under Clause 108. There should therefore be no gap in procurement regulations between the two. On health issues, regarding entities under health procurement, further work is going on at the moment in both departments, and we will come back to the noble Baroness as things move forward.
I turn to the amendments in this group. I note that other non-government amendments have been tabled, some of which address prompt payment and relate to SMEs but are also about social values, which have been quite a big part of this debate. Those will be covered at a later stage so I will not cover them; my noble friend the Minister will do so, some of them probably in the next group.
Amendment 38 would impact Clause 10, Amendments 97 and 100 would impact Clause 18 and Amendments 290 and 295 would impact Clause 54. Each of these amendments has been proposed by my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe, and I thank her for them. They would enable contracting authorities to exempt businesses, based on their size and turnover, from certain obligations set out in the Bill. Public
sector procurers are required to determine the most advantageous offer through fair and open competition, and the Bill sets out that the buyer should contract with the bidder offering the most advantageous tender. We want to focus on getting the best value for the taxpayer by opening competition to all businesses of all sizes.
That is not to say that we are not keen to open public procurement, as I have said, to more SMEs; in fact, quite the opposite. First, we are committed to ensuring that the new procurement regime is simpler, quicker and cheaper for suppliers, which particularly benefits SMEs and social enterprises, ensuring lower barriers for entry to the market. Secondly, bidders will have to submit their core credentials only once to a single platform, making it easier, especially for SMEs, to bid for any public contract. The single transparency platform means that suppliers will be able to seek all opportunities, including a pipeline of future opportunities, in one place.
Thirdly, the Bill will ensure that prompt payment flows down the supply chain, making it more attractive for SMEs to get involved. Fourthly, contracts below the threshold listed in Schedule 1 can be reserved for suppliers based in the UK and/or small suppliers where it is good value for money to do so. Thus, the Bill represents good news for SMEs.
While we share the noble Baroness’s keenness to support SMEs in getting access to public procurements, we cannot do that by simply exempting them from procurement rules altogether, as her amendment to Clause 10 would do.
Amendment 50, also proposed by my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe, would require the procurement objectives in Clause 11 to make explicit the obligation on contracting authorities to have regard to the importance of keeping the burden on SMEs associated with tendering as low as possible. While we support this goal, there are risks in legislating in such stark terms. Contracting authorities must keep an open and fair playing field for all bidders. While we take steps which facilitate access, in particular for SMEs, it would not be wise to encourage the procurement community to believe that some form of active discrimination in favour of SMEs was appropriate.
That said, we have taken significant actions to level the playing field for SMEs without actively discriminating. Some of these I have mentioned, but I add that we have reformed commercial tools, such as frameworks. This will allow longer-term open frameworks, which will be reopened for new suppliers to join at set points, so SMEs are not locked out, and the new concept of dynamic markets—