Member

Too many consultancies have got fat on public procurement. Too many multinational companies have made very considerable profits and private equity firms have bought in to some of these areas and have also made very considerable profits. Some of them then go on to make political donations to particular political parties, which is not the sort of thing that we would like to see in any event. So there is a large agenda here and I do not think this SI provides an opportunity to address that. I hope that, when the policy statement comes out, we will have a thorough debate on it. I say to the Minister that there is a lot of work to do yet to improve the quality of our public procurement and to push it out from the centre to the regions, the localities and local government.