Procurement Bill [HL]

Lord Coaker Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 26th October 2022 Grand Committee

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, and congratulate her on the first half of her contribution, which clearly identified a crucial problem that has undoubtedly been missed by numerous other eyes.

However, I entirely disagree with the second part of her contribution, which referred to Clause 76(4). I do not often find myself in the position of defending what is potentially the Government’s position—perhaps I am about to pre-empt entirely what the Minister is about to say—but subsection (4) says:

“If a contracting authority is aware of circumstances”.


It does not say, “We expect the contracting authority to be clairvoyant and know of every single circumstance where a reasonable person might”. We all know this. Think about local councils. Having been a local journalist on another continent, I think of a case where a large city authority kept commissioning a certain architect to do a whole series of projects. That ended up raising considerable public concern. If that is happening, noble Lords can see why it would make sense to pre-empt the explanation of why there is no conflict of interest and therefore no problem here. It is also worth pointing out that the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, said that this was a subjective judgment that would affect the letting of the contract. In fact, it would not; it just says that there must be details of the steps included. So I would defend Clause 76(4), if the Government feel that it needs to be defended.

Before I get to what I chiefly want to say, I want to apologise briefly. I attached my name to a number of amendments in the previous group; I meant to be here to speak to them but events unfortunately intervened and I could not be. I still stand behind them.

Coming to this group, I have attached my name to a number of amendments in various combinations of the names of the noble Lords, Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Scriven, and the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. As the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, clearly outlined—I will not go over the same ground—the Boardman review reported in May 2021, which has allowed plenty of time for this issue to be included in this Bill, despite all the hurry and rush that we know there has been around it. I would also point out something that the noble Lord did not say: when the Boardman report came out, the Government said, “We accept all of these recommendations”. If the Government have accepted them, they should surely be incorporated in this Bill.

I want to pick up on one amendment that I did not sign, although I would have had I noticed it: Amendment 413 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, that

“a donation or loan of more than £7,500 to any political party in a calendar year”

should be declared. We are talking about transparency and trust. This is obviously a practical, simple step that would not be very hard to implement and would be well worth while.

Amendments 421 to 423 are about preventing undue influence. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, I shall concentrate on Amendment 423. There is huge public concern about the revolving door, and I note that my honourable friend in the other place, Caroline Lucas, has done a huge amount of work, dating back in Hansard to at least 2013, on the revolving door in the defence and energy sectors.

That concern is not restricted to the Green Party. I was just looking through some of the reports. In 2011, Transparency International UK issued a press release headed

“Revolving door between Government and business is ‘spinning out of control’”.

If it was spinning out of control in 2011, we are at jet engine speeds by this stage. In 2016, the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, in a report entitled Redefining Corruption, said that the public want a ban on the revolving door. This amendment provides much less than a ban; it is a modest six months, and I am not altogether sure that it should not be longer, but there is certainly great public concern about this. In 2017, the Committee on Standards in Public Life expressed concern about the revolving door.

The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, set out one disturbing case. Here is another. In 2020, We Own It highlighted the interaction between Serco and NHS Test and Trace, and the degree to which there has been a revolving door between Serco and the senior Civil Service, to the point where a former head of public affairs of Serco became a Health Minister—I am not sure how many Health Ministers back, but at some point, anyway.

Finally, we should not forget the Greensill scandal. Just look at the mess that arose in part because of a revolving door—indeed, in some cases people were stuck in the same door at the same time, apparently representing both private interests and public, government interests. The Advisory Committee on Business Appointments noted that there were thousands of potential cases, but initially looked at only 108. There is lots of discussion about limits to that committee’s power; it cannot possibly cover this issue. We must start from the other side of the contracts.

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

My Lords, I will be relatively brief, because I sense that some of the drive and energy has gone out of the Committee.

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

Noble Lords have more energy than me, then.

Having said that, we are discussing incredibly important issues. In his opening remarks about Part 5, the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, was absolutely right. To be fair to the Government, Part 5 is undoubtedly a step forward and an improvement. For that reason, they are to be commended.

The amendments before us seek to improve what the Government have done and take it forward, and to provide clarity where it is lacking, as the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, has done. These amendments are particularly good in challenging the Government to go further in achieving their objectives, but also asking whether they are sure they have defined things as well as they might have done.