Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken in this debate seeking—quite rightly—some clarification. I will refer first to the below-threshold limits, because I think that that would put this in a context that might be helpful. The below threshold for local authorities is £207,720 for goods and services and £5.193 million for works; that is the threshold that applies here. I should add that central government has had similar powers to these since December 2020, so we are doing something for local government that central government has had for some time. The noble Lord, Lord Kirkhope, spoke about best value in procurement. I agree entirely with what the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, said: it is my belief that best value should definitely include the social value of local procurement, which is why the Government were keen to take this step as soon as we could. It brings jobs locally and helps local businesses. That can be very much added into the best value equation for local people. On the definition of local authorities, there is a flexible definition of what a local authority is. To refer to the questions that have been asked, it is for the local authority to determine what that local area will be. The order has been drafted to take account of changes that will be made by the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill regarding local government reorganisation and authorities’ geographic areas of responsibility. Strategic authorities are already covered by the order, and combined authorities and county combined authorities are already listed as best value authorities under Section 1 of the Local Government Act 1999. This order applies to all best value authorities. Importantly, for strategic authorities, a designation applies to particular combined authorities and combined county authorities; the underlying corporate entities remain the county authority or the county combined authority. When they receive a strategic authority designation, they continue to be best value authorities and, therefore, to be covered by this order—so no amendment to the order will be needed. It is intended that this measure is future-proofed, which will include new local authorities formed as part of the reorganisation process. On the advertisement issue raised by the noble Lord, Lord Kirkhope, I understand his point about this having the potential to be a political matter, but these are economic decisions taken in terms of the contract. It is hard to see a situation where a local authority would take a decision about where it was going to have its boundary in relation to politics, because that will change; you might very well cause yourself a future problem if you were to do that. These decisions should be taken as economic and financial decisions for the council concerned. Of course, the advertisement must state the area to which the contract applies, so it has to go out in public with that. I hope that I have covered the question from the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, about definition in my response to the question from the noble Lord, Lord Kirkhope. Local authorities will be able to determine in a flexible way what their local area is; they can set it as their own area, or the entire county or borough in which they are located, or they can extend it to bordering English counties or other areas local to them as they see fit, or to London boroughs. If you are in the south of my county, you will have London boroughs on your southern border, so you may wish to extend it to them as well.