My Lords, I will try to be reasonably brief in summing up some of the points made. I start by welcoming my noble friend’s Amendment 174 about late payment. It is a point he has made continually and this important amendment should not get lost in these great debates about serious international issues. His point about trying to support small and medium-sized businesses through dealing with late payments deals
with the point that my noble friend Lady Hayman and I are also trying to deal with in Amendment 179. I would not want that to get lost.
In speaking to Amendment 329, in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Hayman, and Amendment 331, in my name and those of my noble friend Lady Hayman, and the noble Lords, Lord Bethell and Lord Fox, I want to wrestle with whether the group is too big or not. At its heart it has the discussion and debate we have had through the Committee—and no doubt will have again on Report, when there will be votes on it—which is on what the Government are trying to achieve through their procurement policy. We are saying that, as well as being efficient, effective, value for money and all those things, there are certain social, economic and other objectives that the Government should also pursue. When we look at this group of amendments, which is about exclusion grounds, a whole range of different issues can be raised to say that, if a firm or supplier does this, it should be excluded from consideration when the contracting authority comes to make its procurement decisions.
Maybe the Government will say that these amendments are not necessary and that they do not want to add them to the Bill. A question then arises for the Minister—I do not believe he believes in accepting serious human rights abuses. If that is not going to be put in the Procurement Bill, how will the Government pursue their objective of trying to do something about serious human rights abuses through the Bill or will they not? Will they just leave it to the market to do?
That is the point of Amendment 331, which my noble friend Lady Hayman, the noble Lords, Lord Bethell and Lord Fox, and I have put down. We have listed just some of the grounds, and we think that, if a supplier is guilty of those human rights abuses as listed in the amendment, and others, the contracting authority should not procure from them. If that is not the right way of going about it, how will the Government ensure that contracting authorities do not purchase from those who have been guilty of serious human rights abuses such as war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, forced sterilisation and so on? I take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Alton, that perhaps genocide needs taking from that; that may be helpful and is obviously something that can be looked at.
It is not just us in this Committee; the Foreign Affairs Committee has also said that the Government and the contracting authority need to take these things into account when it comes to purchasing. The Government’s response to the Foreign Affairs Committee’s report, published in November, says:
“The forthcoming Public Procurement Bill will further strengthen the ability of public sector bodies to disqualify suppliers from bidding for contracts where they have a history of misconduct, including forced labour or modern slavery.”
There is a lot of pressure from lots of different bodies to do something about this.
I thought my noble friend Lord Hain made a brilliant speech on his Amendments 184 and 187. He talked about Bain with respect to South Africa. If his amendments are not the right way of going about things, what will the Government do about it? These are the Committee’s questions.
The noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, made a very important point about environmental considerations in Amendment 310 and so on. The Government will say, “We are very concerned about the environment; we agree with the thrust of the amendment.” If that is true, and the amendment is not going to be accepted and go into the Bill, how will that aim be achieved? That is certainly the frustration that I feel, and I want the Minister to answer on how it will be achieved if this is not in the Bill.
I come to Amendment 353 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, supported by the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Newnham, and me. The noble Earl, Lord Dundee, also came in on that. I thank him for his kind remarks about my report at the Council of Europe; I appreciated that. That amendment is, again, about supply chains and how we ensure that contracting authorities do not contract with those who have modern slavery, exploitation and all those things that we would object to within their supply chains. If the Government do not agree with Amendment 353 and think it is unnecessary, how are they going to achieve what that amendment seeks to achieve? That is an important question for the Government to answer.
In other words, why are all the amendments in this group unnecessary? Why do they not matter? Why are they irrelevant? Why do we not need them in the Bill? How will the Government achieve all these objectives if they are going to say that all these amendments are not acceptable?
On the point that the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, made—she also picked up one or two of the points that the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, made—Schedules 6 and 7 are massive. To be frank about it, whatever the rights and wrongs of those schedules, they have huge implications. All I want to ask the Minister is: how have the lists in Schedules 6 and 7 both been arrived at?
You could pick up a number of examples. Why, for example, does Schedule 7(15) set out a discretionary ground for exclusion for threats to national security? I find that quite difficult to understand. No doubt there is a good reason for it but you would have thought that a national security threat would be a mandatory ground for exclusion. The reason is probably in there somewhere but I could not find it. If you look at Schedule 7, there is a whole list of slavery and trafficking offences that are discretionary. It might be that they should be so but you would have to do a lot to convince the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, and me—let alone the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud—that they should be discretionary.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, noted, whatever the rights and wrongs of these schedules and whether they should be there or not, how have the lists been arrived at? The purpose of Committee is to try to understand what the Government are doing so that, on Report, we can make our minds up on whether amendments that can be voted on should be taken forward.