Baroness Twycross (Lab)

I am very grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken in this debate. As I outlined at the start, this legislation will support the commencement of the new Procurement Act 2023, which embodies our ambition to open up public procurement to a more diverse supply base, making it easier for new entrants such as small businesses and social enterprises to compete and win public contracts, including measures to improve prompt payment and transparency of opportunities on a single platform, and enable basic supplier details to be submitted once only. I am less surprised by the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, than by those of the Opposition Front Bench. I have asked repeatedly in briefings about whether this instrument would differ from that of the previous Government, had they introduced it, and have been told that it would not. I am slightly surprised, but I appreciate that we now have a different Government and I very proud to be introducing this on their behalf. I will go through a number of points to make sure that I respond to the questions raised. The key point that came up from both the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, and the noble Baroness, Lady Finn, was on the timing of the updated NPPS. We will be publishing this shortly and it will be in time for the commencement of the Procurement Act. It is perfectly reasonable and right to ensure that the NPPS reflects the Government’s approach and the mission, so I cannot accept that we should have just gone ahead with the previous one. The noble Lord, Lord Wallace, made a point about the time that businesses may have to adapt between the publication of the policy statement and the commencement of the Act. As I said, the Government are going to publish this statement in time for the commencement of the Procurement Act on 24 February this year. We have been consulting with stakeholders in developing the statement, and this has included a series of round-table discussions. It is aimed at contracting authorities and should not place burdens on suppliers, and we have trained 16,000 procurement practitioners in the new rules. The noble Baroness, Lady Finn, raised a point around whether the regulations would be more burdensome. The amendment made by these regulations will ensure that contracting authorities are not incurring an additional burden for having to report against every performance indicator used to manage a contract throughout its life, but only those most material to the performance of the key obligations of the contract at the time the relevant notice is published. This is in line with the original policy intent, as communicated to stakeholders through the passage of the Bill, and the amendment corrects an error in the drafting. I will now address some of the issues raised by the noble Lord, Lord Robathan. In doing so, I hope that I will persuade him that he does not need to regret in the way that his amendment suggests. In relation to what the transparency measures would do, changes have been made in response to feedback on the Procurement Regulations 2024 about the potential burden of, for example, raising the thresholds for certain transparency requirements, removing the proposed requirement for publication of tenders received, reducing requirements for publication of valuation details and creating exemptions for schools and private utilities. The Government believe that the revised requirements represent a proportionate approach. On the noble Lord’s points around what the consequential amendments do in practice, the consequential amendments to existing UK legislation are a technical aspect of this instrument. These regulations amend language and references to the previous procurement regime to reference the 2023 Act and the terminology used in it. The consequential amendments will not impact the way procuring entities conduct procurement as intended under the Act or make new policy decisions. Necessary consultation with departments holding ownership of the legislation to be amended has taken place to ensure that existing legislation can function as intended. For legislation that is relied on by devolved authorities, the Government have consulted officials to ensure that it functions as intended. The noble Lord asked what amendments the regulations make to the Health Care Services (Provider Selection Regime) Regulations 2023. These amendments help to ensure that the provider selection regime’s exclusion requirements align with those set out in the Procurement Act. This will help to ensure consistency across the two regimes and better protect healthcare services procurement from suppliers that pose a risk. The noble Lords, Lord Robathan and Lord Fuller, asked questions about the vertical and horizontal and affiliated undertakings exemptions relating to Regulations 42A to 42F. The detailed and technical explanation of various calculations ensures that thresholds for these exemptions are effective as a form of anti-abuse mechanism. This will prevent any abuse of the activities threshold that would give the controlled person an unfair advantage over other suppliers by being subsidised by the controlling contracting authority. Contracting authorities will also benefit from clear and consistent rules on how to apply the rules. The noble Baroness, Lady Finn, asked why ARIA, the Advanced Research and Invention Agency, is an excluded contracted authority. These regulations only repeal an old amendment to the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 and do not affect the status of ARIA. However, ARIA is now an excluded contracting authority under the Procurement Act. This is due to the nature of ARIA’s work. Most of its procurement would not be considered covered procurement. Therefore, the Act made ARIA exempt from the UK’s domestic procurement legislation.