My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Wigley. I agree with him, but I will take us back to the issues that have mostly been covered in this group. There are six amendments to which I have attached my name and I am sure the Committee will be relieved to know that I am not going to speak to them all.
I will speak chiefly to Amendment 61 from the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, to which I have attached my name. It was very kindly introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, although it was not backed by her. I will now attempt to present the argument in its favour. I stress that the intellectual work on this has been done very much by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, but, when I saw the amendment, I thought it was so important that it needed to be picked up.
The purpose of this amendment is linked to the description of the national procurement policy statement in Clause 12, which is
“setting out the Government’s strategic priorities in relation to procurement.”
Wrestling with all the government amendments and the complexity of this Bill has been challenging for the small Green group, but I understand that there are no government amendments to change “procurement” in Clause 12(1) to the technical term “covered procurement”. It is the Government’s intention that their strategic priorities should apply to all public procurement, including below-threshold procurement, light-touch procurement, international agreement procurement, and defence and security contracts.
As noble Lords have been talking about a lot in this group, the first part of this clause is the achievement of targets set out in the Climate Change Act 2008 and the Environment Act 2021. I posit that there are good reasons to put statutory obligations such as these in a list of strategic priorities; if they are not included, they are effectively deprioritised, which would be potentially damaging to the achievement of targets that have been mandated by Parliament, with very strong cross-party support. To pick up the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, these are things that have been agreed but need to be delivered on.
On that point about delivery, I refer to the report two weeks ago from the Committee on Climate Change. In what has to be called the strongest of language, it spoke about “major policy failures” and “scant evidence of delivery”. Through this procurement, we need to see this urgent delivery.
In introducing this group, the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, suggested that this was a list of pet clauses, but the first elements here, on the climate targets and the Environment Act, are clearly not pet clauses. We have covered proposed new paragraph (b) about the Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012 at length, so I will not go back to that territory. I admit that proposed new paragraph (c) on innovation and competitiveness is not the wording I would have chosen and might perhaps fit in that category, but there is an important fourth point here with proposed new paragraph (d) on
“the minimisation of fraud, corruption, waste or the abuse of public money”.
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Noting the broad if not completely broad support for this from the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, and myself, I will draw in some more political breadth. I doubt we will see the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, participating in this Committee, but it is entirely appropriate to refer to his resignation speech as a very powerful argument for the need for proposed new paragraph (d). I also make the point that Amendment 61 does not prevent Ministers adding their own priorities to this list. I have done my best to present that argument.
I am delighted to see how many members of the Committee have expressed support for Amendment 66 on food, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott. Having signed it, I want to stress how much movement we have seen in this area. I am very aware of this, because some of the first Written Questions I asked in your Lordships’ House were about the procurement of locally sourced, healthy and organic food for schools, hospitals and prisons. The Answer I got back in relation to all three was, “We don’t know”. Yet we have now seen, through the Government’s food strategy, an acknowledgement—although I would say it is inadequate —that public procurement has to address these issues.
The Government often talk about being world leading. These targets, which, as the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, set out, have been established through very careful consideration and development of the national food strategy, are still extraordinarily modest by international standards. I know of many cities where targets for food in schools, hospitals and prisons are very close to 100%, with very demonstrable positive effects. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott—and the comments in the Committee have supported this—that this is an uncontroversial amendment which the Government can surely accept.