In keeping with the obvious mood of the Committee, I actually do not want to say very much either on this particular group. The interest I had was in the amendment from the noble Lords, Lord Wallace and Lord Fox, in this group, on how excluded suppliers demonstrate their reliability following the application of an exclusion order, and the process of self-cleansing. I was particularly interested in what this process of self-cleansing means. I am presuming—from the Minister’s helpful introduction—that the company is excluded for X reason, and is told that in the notice that goes to an excludable supplier, and then it goes back to the Government and says, “We’ve undertaken the process of self-cleansing and therefore the problems that you highlighted with us are no longer applicable”. So, I wondered whether the Minister could say a little bit more about the process of self-cleansing, which was the element that I found a little
bit vague, if I am honest, and goes with many of the problems we have: the Minister talks about a “proportionate response” from the Government, and those sorts of phrases, and again we get into the problem of definition.
The other point I will make concerns what the Minister rightly pointed out: Schedules 6 and 7 outline the grounds rather than the process. There are the mandatory grounds in Schedule 6 and the discretionary grounds in Schedule 7, both of which a contracting authority might think applies to it. On the grounds in these schedules, can the Minister give us an example of what the process or timescale will be and an example of how it would work? Presumably the Minister sends this to the contracting authority and says, for example, “We think you should be excluded because of this in Schedule 6”, and if the company says, “No, this isn’t the case”, a discussion takes place. It would be helpful for the Committee to understand this process.
Finally, can the Minister confirm that, as I read it, there is also an appeals process? If the Government decided that a firm or supplier should be excluded, am I right in saying that this decision could be appealed? If it is appealed, who is it appealed to—presumably not the same person who made the decision to exclude them in the first place? I am querying the independence of that appeal process and the amount of time that this would take. A little more detail would be useful on the matter of an “excluded supplier” and an “excludable supplier”.
I do not want to keep the Committee any longer on this group of amendments, because the Minister’s helpful outline clarified some of the points I would have made about why “person” changes to “supplier”. I look forward to the Minister’s response to my questions.