Oral Answers to Questions

Julia Lopez Excerpts

Thursday 17th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Julia Lopez) [V]]

With your permission, Mr Speaker, I will croak through these Questions together.

Working effectively with the private sector, including external consultants, has undoubtedly helped us to address some of the huge challenges the pandemic served up, but contracting authorities must extract value for money for taxpayers when working in this way. The outsourcing playbook updated in June includes many key policies to improve the quality of contracts in place with industry, but also to build internal civil service capability to reduce our reliance on external consultants.

[Clive Lewis [V]]

[Inaudible.]

[Andrew Gwynne [V]]

The National Audit Office’s investigation into Government procurement during the pandemic reflects the chaotic culture of outsourcing across Government. Contracts have been awarded after work has begun without competition and without any meaningful due diligence checks. How can the public have any trust in the Government’s response if the Government are not transparent with them?

[Julia Lopez]

The National Audit Office set out a number of recommendations that we will be looking into, but the idea that we did not need to contract under emergency terms during the pandemic is inaccurate, and there are rules in place to allow us to do that. We have been slow to publish contracts because we experienced some problems, which I set out in the Westminster Hall debate last week, but we now have 100% of those contracts for the relevant bodies.

[Margaret Greenwood [V]]

The Good Law Project estimates that £1.6 billion-worth of contracts for covid-19 services have yet to be published, and details of contracts are consistently being published late. This is despite the fact that there is a legal requirement for those details to be published no more than 30 days after the contract is awarded. The Government are clearly failing in their duties. What is the Minister going to do to improve transparency in Government procurement?

[Julia Lopez]

We have now published in full all the contracts for personal protective equipment. There are some difficulties in doing that, which, as I say, I set out last week in the Westminster Hall debate. This week we have launched a Green Paper on public procurement, and we will be introducing a number of changes to our existing procurement regime when the transition period is over, which will improve the way we do things in future.

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

The Minister mentions the Green Paper on procurement, which the Government published this week. The foreword to the Green Paper acknowledges the need to

“strengthen our longstanding and essential principles…of transparency, ensuring value for money and fair treatment of suppliers.”

With serious concerns being raised about the multiple contracts awarded by the Government, with no competition, to companies with strong connections to the Tory party and no clear track record of delivery, will the Minister put those warm words into action now and extend the Freedom of Information Act to all private companies, such as Serco, delivering public services?

[Julia Lopez]

I am not sure what the implications of extending FOI would be in terms of commercial confidentiality, but I am happy to look into that for the hon. Lady. The Green Paper is there to reassure and to deal with some of the problems we have had during the pandemic, where we have either had a full-fat tender that takes far too long in an emergency situation, or a situation of direct award. I am happy to look into her suggestion.

[Mr Speaker]

Let us head back to Norwich South and hope Alan Partridge does not get in the way of me hearing Clive Lewis.

[Clive Lewis [V]]

Thank you, Mr Speaker; I can be heard at last. Given that this Government have doled out £10.5 billion of our money without any competition, according to the National Audit Office, and frittered hundreds of millions on consultants and individuals whose main qualification seems to be that they are friends with members of this Government, does the Minister agree that in any other part of the world it would be called corruption, plain and simple?

[Julia Lopez]

I would not agree. It is very important to understand that every contract went through the same eight-stage process, where it was looked into. The contracts were done on the grounds of commercial sense, rather than anything to do with any connections. As the NAO report said, Ministers declared all interests and there was no evidence of any wrongdoing.

[Kate Osborne (Jarrow) (Lab)]

What plans the Government have to ensure that the May 2021 local elections are covid-19 secure.

--- Later in debate ---

[Scott Benton (Blackpool South) (Con)]

What steps he is taking to increase the proportion of civil service jobs based outside London.

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Julia Lopez) [V]]

We want to make the administration of government much less Whitehall-centric and more reflective of the country as a whole. The Government are committed to an ambition to relocate 22,000 civil service roles out of the capital and into the regions and nations of the UK by the end of this decade. Our Places for Growth programme envisages a series of hub locations, with additional aligned offices within travelling distance of those hubs, and we hope this will deliver on our levelling-up ambitions.

[Saqib Bhatti [V]]

Does my hon. Friend agree with me that the west midlands is the perfect place to welcome a Government Department, and will she pay tribute to the Mayor of the West Midlands, Andy Street, who has been working with Cabinet Office Minister Lord Agnew to make sure that we can take advantage of the economic investment and employment opportunities that relocation would bring to the west midlands?

[Julia Lopez]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. He has a fantastic record of championing employment and investment in his region from his time with the Greater Birmingham Chambers of Commerce and with the launch this month of his business forum. It is great to see him working hand in glove with the West Midlands Mayor, Andy Street, and I am very confident that, when we are ready to make the announcements on Places for Growth, the west midlands will benefit from this very exciting agenda.

[Scott Benton]

Does my hon. Friend agree with me that for Government to be able to make the best decisions for local communities, civil servants and Government Departments should be based across the whole country, including in Blackpool, as this will allow the Government to truly represent the diverse nature of many of the communities across our United Kingdom? In that vein, will my hon. Friend meet me to discuss the different opportunities that relocating Government Departments can bring to Blackpool?

[Julia Lopez]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. He is a fantastic champion of Blackpool, and it has been great to see icons of civic pride, such as the Tower ballroom, secure culture funds thanks to his efforts. I wholeheartedly agree with him that the Government must be better connected to the communities we serve, and that really is the thrust of the Places for Growth programme. I am happy to meet him if he wishes to set out how his town can help in that agenda.

--- Later in debate ---

[Zarah Sultana (Coventry South) (Lab)]

The Government’s plans to mimic the Republican party’s voter suppression tactics risk denying millions of people the right to vote. Hardest hit will be already marginalised groups such as the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities. Despite their already being one of the most discriminated against groups in the country, neither the Government’s equalities impact assessment nor the Electoral Commission’s evaluation of voter identification pilots make reference to Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities. Instead of at best ignoring those communities, and at worst demonising them, will the Government scrap plans to create further barriers to their democratic participation?

[Julia Lopez]

We will continue to work with charities and civil society organisations, including those that represent Traveller and Roma communities, to ensure that voter ID is inclusive of all eligible voters, but we have no plans to scrap it. It is extremely to protect the integrity of our democracy and I fully support it.

[Mr Speaker]

In order to ensure the safe exit of hon. Members participating in this item of business and the safe arrival of those participating in the next, I am suspending the House for a few minutes.

Government’s Civil Estate: Efficiency and Sustainability

Julia Lopez Excerpts

Thursday 17th December 2020 Written Statements

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Julia Lopez)]

I have today laid before Parliament, pursuant to Section 86 of the Climate Change Act 2008, the “State of the Estate in 2019-20”. This report describes the efficiency and sustainability of the Government’s civil estate and records the progress that Government have made since the previous year. The report is published on an annual basis.

The attachments can be viewed online at: http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/written-questions-answers-statements/written-statement/Commons/2020-12-17/HCWS669/.

[HCWS669]

Unconscious Bias Training

Julia Lopez Excerpts

Tuesday 15th December 2020 Written Statements

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Julia Lopez)]

This Government are committed to levelling up opportunity for everyone, no matter what their background. We are also determined to eliminate discrimination in the workplace. To meet those ambitions, we must ensure that policy and advice on equality is evidence-based, and is delivered in a way that means we can respond quickly to new insights.

Earlier this year, the Government Equalities Office commissioned the behavioural insights team for a summary of the evidence on unconscious bias and diversity training. Titled “Unconscious bias and diversity training—what the evidence says”, the report highlights that

“there is currently no evidence that this training changes behaviour in the long term or improves workplace equality in terms of representation of women, ethnic minorities or other minority groups”.

It also states that there is emerging evidence of unintended negative consequences.

The report is published alongside this response, and will be deposited in the Libraries of both Houses, today. In light of its findings, Ministers have concluded that unconscious bias training does not achieve its intended aims. It will therefore be phased out in the civil service. We encourage other public sector employers to do likewise.

Background

Unconscious bias training typically aims to raise awareness of the potential biases and cognitive shortcuts that may negatively affect decision-making and behaviour in the workplace. The intent is usually to reduce both explicit and implicit bias towards members of particular groups that share characteristics protected under law and change behaviour.

Although unconscious bias training takes a variety of forms, it is normally delivered as a discrete individual or group session that aims to set out the theory behind implicit bias, provide exercises that demonstrate how such biases might potentially affect behaviour, and suggest strategies to participants for avoiding that behaviour in future.

Such training sessions have been introduced by a range of organisations as part of a well-intentioned effort to build fairer and more inclusive workplaces. They have often formed part of a wider employer toolkit aimed at tackling discrimination and building inclusion.

However, in recent years a significant debate has emerged over their effectiveness and quality. Despite a growing diversity training industry and increased adoption of unconscious bias training programmes, a strong body of evidence has emerged that shows that such training has no sustained impact on behaviour and may even be counter-productive.

Lack of evidence to support positive change

To be successful in tackling discrimination, unconscious bias training should change behaviour. However, evidence suggests that attitudes and behaviours are each driven by different psychological systems, so a single intervention is unlikely to impact effectively on both. A systematic review of unconscious bias training examining 492 studies (involving more than 87,000 participants), found changes to unconscious bias measures were not associated with changes in behaviour.¹ Formal assessments of bias (e.g. the implicit association test) have also been criticised for failing to generate replicable results even when the same individuals have been re-tested.²

Further evidence also suggests that unconscious bias training may even have detrimental effects. The Equality and Human Rights Commission found that evidence for its ability effectively to change behaviour is limited and

“there is potential for back-firing effects when UBT participants are exposed to information that suggests stereotypes and biases are unchangeable”.

Instructions to suppress stereotypes may not only activate and reinforce unhelpful stereotypes, they may provoke negative reactions and actually make people exacerbate their biases.³

Finally, there is no recognised way of assuring the quality of unconscious bias training and multiple interventions of variable content may be given that label. This has serious implications for organisations, who risk putting funding into poor quality and ineffective training.

Government conclusion

The civil service is committed to being an open and inclusive employer. Civil servants work on a range of complex policies every day; working inclusively means that they will make better decisions, solve problems more effectively and ultimately deliver better services to citizens. An individual’s background must never be a limiting factor in the workplace. Our aspiration is clear: a civil service open to all, with individuals from a variety of backgrounds adding breadth and depth to our understanding of contemporary British society, providing greater challenge to received wisdom and fresh perspectives to the challenges we face as a nation—united by a commitment to the fundamental values of public life and service.

Efforts to ensure the civil service is representative of the whole population it serves, and that its workplaces are free from discrimination, must be based on clear evidence of what works, must uphold the merit principle for recruitment and promotion, and must represent value for taxpayers’ money. This approach is the reason, for example, that the civil service uses clear, standardised assessment techniques for recruitment and tests the fairness of any such tools with diverse user groups before deploying them.

Given the evidence, now captured in the report accompanying this statement, an internal review decided in January 2020 that unconscious bias training would be phased out in Departments. In addition, while there is clearly a role for training to support a more inclusive workplace and civil service, evidence also suggests that even the broader category of “diversity training” as a standalone exercise can undermine such efforts if it appears to be a “tick box exercise”. The civil service will therefore integrate principles for inclusion and diversity into mainstream core training and leadership modules in a manner which facilitates positive behaviour change. This new strategy will be published in the new year, and will reassert our commitment to being an inclusive employer with a stronger focus on engaging measurable action.

The Government expect other parts of the public sector, including local government, the police, and the NHS, to review their approaches in light of the evidence and the developments in the civil service. We will continue to build the evidence on what works to make our workplaces fairer, and unite and level up across our country, with the reformed equality hub playing a key role.

¹ Forscher, P. S.*, Lai, C. K.*, Axt, J. R., Ebersole, C. R., Herman, M., Devine, P. G., and

Nosek, B.A. (2019). A meta-analysis of procedures to change implicit measures. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 117, 522-559.

² Gawronski, Bertram and Morrison, Mike and Phills, Curtis and Galdi, Silvia. (2017). Temporal Stability of Implicit and Explicit Measures: A Longitudinal Analysis. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. 43. 300-312. 10.1177/0146167216684131.

³ Dobbin and Kalev (2018), “Why Doesn’t Diversity Training Work? The Challenge for Industry and Academia”, 10(2), 48-55; Dobbin and Kalev (2016) Why Diversity Programs Fail, Harvard Business Review 94, (7); Michelle M Duguid, Melissa C Thomas-Hunt, “Condoning stereotyping? How awareness of stereotyping prevalence impacts expression of stereotypes”, March 2015, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25314368/; Frederick L Oswald, Gregory Mitchell, Hart Blanton, James Jaccard, Philip E Tetlock, “Predicting ethnic and racial discrimination: a meta-analysis of IAT criterion studies”, 17 June 2013, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23773046/ id="18WS" class="column-number" data-column-number="18WS">

The attachments can be viewed online at: http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/written-questions-answers-statements/written-statement/Commons/2020-12-15/HCWS652/.

[HCWS652]

Transforming Public Procurement

Julia Lopez Excerpts

Tuesday 15th December 2020 Written Statements

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Julia Lopez)]

The UK spends around £290 billion per year on public procurement. Leaving the EU offers us a huge opportunity to reform how this money is spent so that it better meets the needs of this country. We can create a new, simpler procurement regime that will reduce costs for business and the public sector by reducing bureaucracy and improving commercial outcomes. Such a large amount of Government spending must be leveraged to play its part in the UK’s economic recovery and unleash opportunities for small businesses to innovate in public service delivery.

The UK remains open for business and committed to our international obligations. Being a member of the WTO Government procurement agreement gives British businesses access to £1.3 trillion in public procurement opportunities overseas. The terms of that trade agreement mean we cannot simply discriminate against suppliers from other GPA countries. Neither would we wish to discriminate against overseas suppliers that deliver inward investment and better value for UK taxpayers.

In support of this, I am launching a public consultation by a Green Paper on “Transforming Public Procurement”. The consultation will be open until March 2021.

In developing the Green Paper proposals, officials in the Government Commercial Function engaged with over 500 stakeholders and organisations through many hundreds of hours of discussions and workshops. Stakeholders included those from central and local government, the devolved Administrations, education, and health as well as start-ups, small, medium and large businesses, the voluntary and charity sectors, academics, international experts and procurement lawyers.

Our proposals are wide-ranging and include:

reducing the overall volume of legislation by harmonising the different regulatory schemes for the public sector, utilities and concessions contracts;

overhauling the current seven complex and inflexible procurement procedures and replacing them with three simple, modern procedures;

increasing the scope to take account of societal benefits when awarding contracts;

making procurement more transparent through greater use of open contracting and enabling a more efficient “tell us once” register of supplier data;

making it mandatory to publish a notice when a decision is made to use the limited tendering procedure;

providing more scope to exclude suppliers in certain circumstances, such as for poor past performance and corruption-related matters; and

reforming the remedies system, through making the court review process faster and less costly, capping damages, and further investigating the feasibility of tribunals.

The consultation published today gives everyone an opportunity to help shape public procurement for the future and I wish to encourage all involved in public procurement to have their say. This includes those small and medium-sized enterprises and voluntary, community and social enterprises who feel the existing EU rules hinder their participation in the market.

Attachments can be viewed online at: http://www. parliament.uk/business/publications/written-questionsanswers-statements/written-statement/Commons/2020-12-15/HCWS651/.

[HCWS651]

Covid-19: NAO Report on Government Procurement

Julia Lopez Excerpts

Wednesday 9th December 2020 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Julia Lopez)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Eagle. I thank the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Dan Carden) for tabling an incredibly important debate, and all those making contributions today. I am also grateful to the NAO for the report. The care with which we spend taxpayers’ money matters very deeply to public confidence in Government.

I do not wish this morning to present a carefully constructed political argument that seeks to dismiss the concerns that have been raised. I want instead to be candid about the challenges the Government had to navigate at the height of the pandemic, provide some context to the NAO’s report, and set out what went well and what undoubtedly could have been done better in the period it focuses on, between January and July.

I was on maternity leave at the height of the pandemic and only began my ministerial role in the Cabinet Office in June. As I took on that role, I confess I shared some of the concerns that have been raised with me in the House about the cost and the circumstances of particular procurements. I wanted to assure myself of what had happened and to get a sense of the full story. Today, I hope to share some of that and to be as transparent as possible, but as I do so, I ask hon. Members to keep three broad points in mind.

First, it is very important to recognise the sheer volume of procurement activity in response to this national health emergency. By 31 July, more than 8,600 contracts worth £18 billion had successfully been awarded, some 90% by the Department of Health and Social Care in value terms. That compares with 174 contracts worth £1.1 billion awarded by that Department last year. In other words, there was a colossal upscaling of effort to take this country through this crisis. Of those contracts, the NAO’s report examined just 20. It obviously focused on the contracts that attracted most public interest.

Secondly, due to time pressures, I am afraid I will be unable to address all the comments. I will focus my contribution on the areas looked into by the NAO report. Finally, although it has become a political cliché to say that we have to learn the lessons from particular events, in this case it is especially important that we learn the right lessons. It might make for a snappy headline or an eye-catching political campaign to suggest that the story of procurement during the crisis has been one of Tory corruption, but it behoves us all to understand what really happened, so we do not overlook what needs to change.

At the height of the crisis in April, as the NAO described in its report, health services across the world faced an unprecedented situation where demand for PPE and other medical products far exceeded supply. Faced with these exceptional levels of global demand, the usual vendors in China who service the central procurement function of the NHS very quickly ran out of supply and the world descended on a few factories in that country to bid for available items. In that market context, the Government needed to procure with extreme urgency, often through direct award of contracts, or we risked missing out on vital supplies. It is here that I would like to address the first of several criticisms being repeated here today: that the Government ripped up procurement rules. That is simply not true.

Regulation 32(2)(c) of the Public Contracts Regulations 2015, which predate the pandemic, explicitly allows for emergency procedures, including direct award. No rules were suspended, relaxed or changed. This was just a case of using existing legally compliant regulations for the purpose for which they were intended. Similar approaches were taken by countries such as Japan, New Zealand and Finland.

In a situation of genuine crisis and extreme emergency, when we had to accept or reject offers in a matter of hours or days, it was simply not viable to run the usual procurement timescales, even if we took advantage of accelerated processes, which still require a minimum of 25 days. Hon. Members will recall that everybody in this House was saying, “Get hold of the kit,” including the Leader of the Opposition.

Nor is it the case that the Government cast aside value-for-money considerations. All offers went through the same eight stage assessment process, and where full competitions for PPE were not possible because of time pressures, we examined prices against a rolling benchmark of prices to protect the taxpayer from mispricing. That is not to say that prices were not higher across the board. It was a massively overheated spot market. Product was often going for more than five times the normal price, and that was made worse by the appearance of opportunistic middlemen, who appeared and started to put down deposits on product, then reselling it for very high handling fees.

Of course, the Government would not normally pay those kinds of fees, but procurement teams were left with some very difficult choices. Either we bought the product, as was rightly and vociferously demanded, or we did not get hold of it for the NHS.

This situation was further complicated by what was going on internally, and that is what I mean when I say we have to make sure we learn the right lessons, particularly about the challenges within our own systems. Some 450 people from across government were moved into the DHSC to become a stand-up virtual team to urgently assist with securing PPE. That team is normally only 21 people-strong. In many ways, getting that number of people together was a great feat, but it also meant that there were a lot of people who did not know each other, all working remotely suddenly from home, on a range of different IT systems, with suppliers they did not know, on product with which they were not familiar, in the most highly pressured market of their careers. That was not an easy operating context.

As concern grew about the level of PPE that might be required to deal with the challenge of covid, the Prime Minister put out a call to action, which I am sure hon. Members will all recall. With great commitment and energy, the British public and the business community responded, but that meant that, in very short order, commercial teams were dealing with more than 15,000 offers of help. Frankly, leads were coming in faster than they could be processed, and when they were rejected or if they were delayed, people started chasing through their MPs. I am sure that many of us in this room experienced that.

In order to manage the influx of offers, a separate mailbox was set up to handle this area of work. That is the oft-cited high-priority lane, which the Opposition have sought to portray as much more sinister than it actually was. Far from being a secret referrals lane, that mailbox was in part a triage for directing more credible leads, and in part an engagement communication tool for managing some of the correspondence that was coming from parliamentarians of all colours, including Opposition MPs and peers. As the NAO said, it was right that we sifted the credible PPE offers from the others. The most important thing to note, as the NAO does in its report, is that all PPE offers, no matter where they came from, went through the same eight-stage check, so there was no special treatment for friends of Ministers.

There has been excitable public commentary, which has been repeated here today, and claims that people were 10 times more likely to get through if they had Tory friends. If anything, the fact that that mailbox had a higher conversation rate demonstrates that the initial triage process was working, as those leads were often more credible and proved fruitful once they had gone through the due diligence process. Even so, it is important to note that, of the 493 offers that came through the priority mailbox, only 47 were taken forward. In other words, 90% were rejected. Indeed, more than 20,000 individual product offers were rejected between the end of March and mid-June because of the robust due diligence processes that had been put in place by our commercial teams.

A number of Members have referred to companies that missed out, and a number of vocal companies have gone on television to say that they do not understand why they missed out. The Government do not have a right to reply in those circumstance, because if we were to set out publicly why that company did not secure a contract, we would be betraying commercial confidences.

The existence of the separate mailbox has added fuel to the fire for those accusing the Government of chumocracy, but if they have read the NAO’s report they should have noticed the conclusion, which has been mentioned by other hon. Members and states that

“ministers had properly declared their interests, and we found no evidence of their involvement in procurement decisions or contract management.”

Our own internal audit on PPE has not found any conflicts either, and we have been searching for them.

[Dan Carden]

Will the Minister give way?

[Catherine West]

Will the Minister give way?

[Julia Lopez]

I am afraid I am really short of time. Forgive me; I want to get through the content.

As I say, no PPE contracts were awarded by reason of who referred them. I remind colleagues that, ultimately, there was very little waste. Of all the product in question, so far only 0.5% of what was ordered was found to be unusable. That is not to say that we cannot improve. Admittedly, there was not an adequate stockpile, and the lack of a central stock control system made it very difficult to get a clear grip of the demand signals coming in through the NHS. That is an extremely important issue to rectify.

[Rachel Hopkins]

Will the Minister give way?

[Julia Lopez]

I am so sorry; I would really like to make progress.

We have also had to rapidly address a strategic over-reliance on China. We have now built up our national capability and resilience, with the potential for 70% of PPE to be produced in the UK. I hope that those lasting national enhancements will be bolstered by the work of the Department for International Trade’s Project Defend, which is looking at other areas where we are critically dependent on other countries for important parts of our manufacturing.

The NAO was absolutely right to identify delays in publishing documentation in relation to emergency procurement. The sheer pace of activity meant that documentation was not perfect. The result is that contracts have not been published online as quickly as they should have been, and it has been left to DHSC to piece together relevant paperwork from the different IT systems, partly because of the large team that had to be brought in from outside DHSC. I very much regret that that lag in our normal transparency timescale has created a sense of mistrust, but we are nearly there. At the time that the NAO did its scrutiny work, only 50% of required contract notices had been published. As of 3 December, it is now 96% of PPE contract award notices on Tenders Electronic Daily, which is the European journal, and 94% on Contracts Finder.

I have concentrated today on PPE, as that is a large focus of the NAO’s two most recent reports. However, the NAO also looked at communications contracts, which the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton referred to, so I would like to spend a moment on that. For context, a number of external research agencies were engaged by the Cabinet Office’s comms unit to test the public reaction to Government messaging on public health. That was crucial to helping us understand people’s attitudes and behaviours during this time and refine public health messaging accordingly to drive behavioural change.

At the time I began my ministerial role, there were reports suggesting that some of those contracts for comms services had been improperly let, and naturally I was unhappy to hear that. Unfortunately, I cannot comment in detail on the specifics of those contracts because the Department is still working on a detailed defence and disclosure in the ongoing judicial review proceedings. However, I can say that following a preliminary internal fact-finding exercise, the Cabinet Office resolved to delve into that properly and commissioned an independent expert review, led by Nigel Boardman, who sits in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and is also a well-respected legal professional, to consider those findings and set out how we could improve, particularly looking at the processes and guidance that teams in the Cabinet Office have access to. The review and its results were published yesterday on gov.uk. The report is forensic in its analysis and hard-hitting in its recommendations. I am pleased to tell colleagues that we will take forward all 28 recommendations in full.

Before I close, I want to say a little about the wider civil service reforms that we are proactively pursuing to address some of the concerns beyond the NAO report. During this time of crisis, people have been concerned about the use of consultants. We are looking at how we can better skill-up civil servants, reduce our reliance on consultancy, and potentially have our own in-house consultancy. We are also consolidating the number of IT systems used across the civil service so that it is easier to move people around internally at speed, and for those systems to be compatible. As has been referenced, we will soon launch our procurement Green Paper. I very much encourage all hon. Members to engage with the consultation process, because once we leave the transition period our country will have an extremely important opportunity to look at these issues.

The proposals have long been in development and will include specific measures to strengthen transparency, making sure that we can have a choice of direct award and more competitive tendering during crises. At the moment it seems that we have either the full-fat procurement, which is much too slow in emergency situations, or direct awards, which lead to the kinds of concerns that we have debated this morning. I know that the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton is particularly concerned about issues of company conduct in procurement. The Green Paper will include proposals to use exclusion rules to tackle unacceptable supplier behaviour, such as tax evasion, embedding transparency by default and developing faster review methods to speed up the court process on legal challenges to genuinely improper procurements.

There is a lot to say, so I am sorry to rush through it all, but I will end by saying that the public are absolutely right to demand that we spend their money with care. I hope the proactive and candid approach that I have set out this morning is reassuring. I remind colleagues that we were procuring for a purpose, and that purpose was to get us through the pandemic. We achieved sufficient PPE for the NHS. We now have 32 billion items of PPE, with no reports of outages, and we have established a four-month stockpile of PPE from November 2020 onwards. Given the extraordinary context, that is an extraordinary feat.

Finally, I pay tribute to civil service colleagues in the commercial function. They might not be on the frontline of the NHS, but they have done extraordinary things in a very difficult operating context. I thank them for all the work that they have done.

Exiting the European Union (European Union)

Julia Lopez Excerpts

Monday 23rd November 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Julia Lopez)]

I beg to move,

That the draft European Union Withdrawal (Consequential Modifications) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020, which were laid before this House on 21 October, be approved.

It is a pleasure to be here to discuss these regulations, and I hope that we are not drawing too much attention away from the Prime Minister’s press conference, which is under way as I speak.

As Members will be aware, at the end of this year the process of transition to our future relationship with the EU will be complete. We will have recovered our economic and political independence, upholding a key demand of the British people. The Government have already undertaken extensive work to provide for a functioning domestic statute book by 31 December. Ahead of our exit from the European Union on 31 January this year, the Government made a significant amount of exit-related legislation, including more than 630 statutory instruments.

The Government continue to deliver the secondary legislation required to ensure a functioning statute book at the end of the transition period, so that we are able to seize the opportunities of being an independent sovereign nation. This instrument is a clear example of that. It makes various consequential amendments and repeals in respect of retained EU law, relevant separation agreement law and other EU-derived domestic legislation. I will take the opportunity to explain that in further detail in a moment, but, in short, this instrument is highly technical and does not implement any new policy. It will ensure that the UK statute book works coherently and effectively following the end of the transition period.

This statutory instrument was laid by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, who cannot be here today, in exercise of the temporary powers provided for in the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 and the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Act 2020. These powers allow Ministers to make provisions that they consider appropriate in consequence of those Acts. I raise that because, during the passage of those Acts, some Members were concerned that these powers were too wide and would not afford Parliament the ability to scrutinise important legislation properly. The Government have always been clear that these are standard consequential powers that are commonplace in legislation and that such powers are inherently limited, with the main expected use of this power being for matters of a technical nature. This instrument is no exception.

The Government have already made several exit-related consequential statutory instruments in recent years, which were needed as a result of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018. Since those instruments were made, we have left the EU with a deal—namely, the withdrawal agreement—and entered into the transition period. The statutory instrument we are discussing today includes provisions required as a result of the withdrawal agreement and the legislation that implemented it: the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Act 2020. The main changes arising from that Act relevant to this instrument are that it introduces the transition period and delays the commencement of exit-related statutory instruments until implementation period completion day; it provides that retained EU law comes into effect on IP completion day instead of exit day; and it establishes relevant separation agreement law. In the light of the introduction of relevant separation agreement law, the instrument clarifies how references in UK legislation to EU instruments are to be interpreted after IP completion day. That includes how references to EU instruments that form part of relevant separation agreement law should be read.

The amendments made to the 2018 Act by the implementation of the withdrawal agreement mean that it is possible for EU instruments to form part of retained EU law for some purposes and have effect as relevant separation agreement law for other purposes. Therefore, after IP completion day, references to EU instruments in domestic legislation can have dual meaning. The instrument makes interpretation provisions to remove uncertainty about which version of an EU instrument applies, whether it is the retained version or the version applied by the withdrawal agreement. This ensures that the correct interpretation of the EU instrument applies following the end of the transition period and, crucially, removes room for confusion or uncertainty.

At this point, I draw the House’s attention to the fact that while the negative procedure could have been used for making this instrument under the consequential powers, we are following the affirmative procedure. This is to provide the opportunity for parliamentary debate on a piece of legislation of significant legal importance—particularly with regard to the updated interpretive provisions for relevant separation agreement law—even if it is not of note in policy terms. To make these interpretive provisions, the instrument makes minor technical amendments to primary legislation, including the 2018 Act, the Interpretation Act 1978 and the latter’s devolved equivalents—the Legislation (Wales) Act 2019, the Interpretation Act (Northern Ireland) 1954 and the Interpretation and Legislative Reform (Scotland) Act 2010.

Although the Government are not required to seek consent from or consult the devolved Administrations on the provisions included in this instrument, there was extensive engagement at official level prior to laying this instrument to make sure that it works effectively for the devolved legislatures. I take this opportunity to note our gratitude to the DAs for their constructive collaboration on this instrument and on the wider body of readiness secondary legislation that is needed by the end of this year.

The instrument also makes technical repeals to redundant provisions in primary legislation arising from the EU (Withdrawal) Act 2018, primarily due to the fact that it repealed the European Communities Act 1972. The 2018 Act provided for the repeal of the amended provisions of the 1972 Act, but not the amending provisions that lie behind them. As a consequence of those repeals, the amending provisions are redundant. Without these regulations, this legislation will continue to sit meaninglessly in our statute book, and repealing it ensures that the statute book remains clear and effective.

As well as repealing redundant legislation, this instrument also makes consequential amendments to the EU (Withdrawal) Act 2018 and the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 (Consequential Modifications and Repeals and Revocations) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 to reflect that they come into effect on IP completion day, rather than exit day, and ensure that they operate effectively in the light of this.

I hope, therefore, that all Members of the House can agree with me that the draft regulations before them perform a small but worthwhile role in our preparations for the end of the transition period and demonstrate the Government’s commitment to ensuring certainty and clarity in the UK’s statute book.

--- Later in debate ---

[Julia Lopez]

As I have set out, the purpose of the instrument really is to ensure that the statute book works coherently and effectively following the end of the transition period. It does this by making various consequential amendments and repeals in respect of retained EU law relevant to the separation agreement law and other EU-derived domestic legislation.

I hear what the hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) says from the Opposition Front Bench. I spoke to my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill) before the debate. He shares some of the concerns about the legislative aspects of leaving the EU and was very satisfied with the regulations. He has consulted his friends and colleagues in the legal and financial services professions, and they believe this to be a useful piece of regulation that clarifies and tackles ambiguity. He has also raised concerns about the complexity of leaving the EU. Yes, leaving the EU is a complex process, and it was always going to be. I am glad to say that the UK public deemed it to be an endeavour worth pursuing. They have supported it throughout the referendum and the subsequent general elections.

The hon. Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady) bemoaned politicians kicking off referendum processes without due consideration. I hope that he will take his own advice. At least, we listened to the result of that referendum.

Finally, I reiterate my thanks to Members across the House for contributing to the debate. This is a highly technical issue and not exactly the most exciting television viewing, but it is a critical piece of secondary legislation that demonstrates the Government’s commitment to ensuring that there is certainty and clarity about the UK statute book.

Question put and agreed to.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I suspend the sitting for the sanitation of the Dispatch Boxes.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julia Lopez Excerpts

Thursday 12th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

What discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for Education on apprenticeship targets for the civil service.

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Julia Lopez)]

The Cabinet Office has been working closely with the Department for Education to deliver on our ambition of 30,000 new apprentices by the end of 2020 and of 2.3% of the civil service workforce in England as apprenticeship starts. We had been on track to meet those targets; unfortunately, because of the pandemic, that has been delayed slightly to April, but we will be publishing further performance data as it becomes available. In the past fortnight, I have written to the skills Minister—the Under-Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Gillian Keegan)—and the Minister for Universities about how we can broaden the apprenticeship supply market and use apprenticeships to attract ever more talented people into the civil service.

[Robert Halfon [V]]

Will my hon. Friend just make it absolutely clear that all public sector bodies must fulfil the legal requirements to fill the 2.3% apprenticeship target, and will she ensure that every new appointment, where possible, is advertised as an apprenticeship to the civil service, whether at level 2 or degree level? Will my hon. Friend also make certain that all Government sector employment contracts have a significant percentage of employees as apprenticeships before the jobs of procurement are offered out?

[Julia Lopez]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his question. I wish to assure him that apprenticeship recruitment is an absolutely core part of Departments’ resourcing plans. We want to make sure the apprenticeship route is used for all recruitment activity, where it is appropriate. I shall look into some of the other issues that he raises.

I am also very keen that we as MPs play our part in highlighting to our constituents some of the absolutely incredible civil service apprenticeship opportunities on offer. In that vein, I am going to host an online apprenticeship event to advertise some of the civil service apprenticeship opportunities, and I should be grateful if my right hon. Friend joined me in that event so that he can advertise them to places such as Harlow College in his constituency.

[Mark Jenkinson (Workington) (Con)]

What steps he is taking to increase the proportion of civil service jobs based outside London.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)]

What steps he is taking to increase the proportion of civil service jobs based outside London.

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Julia Lopez)]

We want to make the administration of government much less London-centric and more reflective of the country as a whole, with an ambition to relocate 22,000 civil service roles out of the capital and into the regions and nations of the UK by the end of this decade. Our Places for Growth programme is an incredibly exciting one, working with Departments and public bodies to establish a series of hub locations that we hope will deliver on our levelling-up ambitions, strengthen the Union, reduce estate costs, support our industrial strategy, and take advantage of untapped talent and expertise.

[Mark Jenkinson]

I thank the Minister for that answer. Can she confirm that, as well as civil service reform, this Government will use the opportunity to level up all parts of the UK? With a Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs site already in Workington, does she agree that we are perfectly placed to take this forward and ensure that the north-west does not get left behind?

[Julia Lopez]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. We hope to be able to announce where we are going to place hub locations shortly. I am afraid that I am not in a position to confirm that now, but I am very confident that the north-west will benefit from the programme. I hope that he will engage with that and contribute in his role on the levelling-up taskforce.

[Jacob Young]

The purpose of moving civil service jobs out of London is not simply to relocate jobs from one part of the country to another, but to place policy makers in communities that have been left behind for too long, such as mine in Redcar and Cleveland. Can my hon. Friend confirm that she has seen the plans presented by Ben Houchen to relocate civil service jobs to Teesside, and will she commit to meeting me and my Tees Valley colleagues to progress these plans further?

[Julia Lopez]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. I have heard the Mayor of Teesside mentioned in this place perhaps more than any civic leader in the country, and I find myself in awe, once again, of the raw power of the Teesside parliamentary caucus. I am pleased to say that I spent last night eagerly reading the Mayor’s plans for the international campus in Teesside, and I particularly enjoyed the value-for-money comparisons with the London housing market. I understand that he has already met the lead official for Places for Growth, and I will be asking for an update on those discussions so we can make sure that the north-east benefits from this agenda.

[David Johnston]

In 2018, just 9% of the civil service fast stream came from a working-class background, which was higher than some previous years, but still low. Does my hon. Friend agree that, as well as improving the locations that civil servants work in and come from, we need to improve the social backgrounds they come from for better policy making and delivery?

[Julia Lopez]

My hon. Friend’s commitment to opportunity for people from less wealthy backgrounds extends back many years to his tremendous work at the Social Mobility Foundation. We are looking at how we can get a more diverse array of people via the Places for Growth programme, but it is not just limited to places for growth; we are looking at the whole human resources strategy in the civil service so that we look at diversity in a much broader way than previously.

[Mr Speaker]

We now head up to Jonathan Gullis in Stoke-on-Trent. No, he is unavailable, so I call David Simmonds.

--- Later in debate ---

[Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)]

What assessment he has made of the effectiveness of Government outsourcing during the covid-19 outbreak.

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Julia Lopez)]

Working effectively with the private sector is a vital part of our response to tackling the covid-19 crisis, allowing us to procure quickly and innovatively and to obtain specialist solutions to the myriad challenges that are facing us. Rapidly obtaining PPE is the most obvious example, but we have also turned to the private sector to help us operate things such as the virtual courts service and video services for families wishing to see loved ones in intensive care units.

We are clear throughout that contracting authorities must use good commercial judgment and continue to achieve value for money for taxpayers, and we are engaged in both internal and external audit to satisfy ourselves that that has been the case. Through “The Outsourcing Playbook” we are also improving the decision making and quality of contracts that the Government place with industry, and we are building our internal civil service capability, as we believe it is important that we invest in our in-house capacity and expertise so that we rely less on external consultants and contractors.

[Kate Hollern [V]]

The Government failed to publish any information about £4 billion-worth of covid-related contracts, all awarded to private companies, in what appears to be a flagrant breach of the law. Will the Minister hold an independent inquiry—and if not, why?

[Julia Lopez]

I am unaware of the details of the allegations that the hon. Lady makes and I would be grateful if she wrote to me about them. As I mentioned in my earlier answer, the National Audit Office will conduct an external review of the procurements during the pandemic, but we are also doing our own internal review. I note some of the criticisms that are made by the Opposition and I wish to satisfy ourselves that those have no basis, because it is very important in this time of crisis that we maintain public confidence in everything that we are doing.

[Mr Speaker]

We are going to have to have shorter questions for other people to get in—it is only fair.

[Julia Lopez]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for the points he raises. As I mentioned, we wish to reassure the public through the use of external and internal audits on some of the issues that he raises, but when it comes to some of the contracts that have been let, we were advised by Labour that we should be looking into a number of different companies, from people producing costumes to a number of other interesting leads that actually led nowhere. We were trying to procure at speed and I have a good degree of confidence in the PPE contracts that were let during this time.

[Matt Western]

I understand what the Minister is saying about trying to procure at speed, but it does seem that some of the agencies that the Government have chosen to do this are completely not fit for purpose and inappropriate. I cite Deloitte, which was appointed to set up a testing centre in south Leamington in my constituency. It took six weeks for a couple of portakabins and a couple of gazebos. How difficult is it? Why was Public Health England not more involved? It could have done this better.

[Julia Lopez]

There is some naivety from Labour Members about how easy it is to do some of these very complex operations at the speed at which they need to be done. We have to thank the private sector for the support that it has given us. We do not have huge volumes of public sector workers sitting there ready to be deployed, and if we did, they would have to be sucked out of other important frontline services. I think we should thank the private sector for the support that it has given us in this very difficult time.

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

£1,040,585,807—that is the value of Government contracts that have been directly awarded without competitive tender to companies that have links to the Conservative party’s friends or donors during the covid crisis. Will the Minister explain why, with the Tory party, it seems to be all cheques and no balances?

[Julia Lopez]

The hon. Lady makes a very serious insinuation about some of the ways in which contracts were let. As I said, we have external and internal audits to make sure that those allegations are investigated and that we are confident that they are baseless. I am happy to continue to engage with her on these issues, but the challenges that have faced us in this time have been substantial and a lot of people have dedicated substantial amounts of time, often for free, to giving their services at a time of crisis. To have insinuations about their character and integrity is very damaging to public confidence.

[Dr Luke Evans (Bosworth) (Con)]

What recent discussions he has had with Cabinet colleagues on co-ordinating a UK-wide response to the covid-19 outbreak.

Draft Public Procurement (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020

Julia Lopez Excerpts

Wednesday 11th November 2020 General Committees

[The Chair]

I call the Minister to move the motion in what I believe is her debut Delegated Legislation Committee performance.

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Julia Lopez)]

I beg to move,

That the Committee has considered the draft Public Procurement (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020.

It is an honour to make my first statutory instrument under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. It ensures that the UK meets the requirements of the withdrawal agreement and the Northern Ireland protocol, and replaces earlier statutory instruments that did not reflect those circumstances.

The instrument is essential to ensure that there is legal clarity for public procurement at the end of the transition period, and certainty while wider procurement reforms are considered and introduced in domestic legislation. The majority of it is unchanged from the Public Procurement (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019, which were debated in both Houses and made on 13 March 2019, and which addressed deficiencies in a no-deal scenario.

To provide legal clarity in public procurement, the instrument consolidates the 2019 regulations and incorporates changes in new provisions where relevant. As in the 2019 regulations, the amendments made by the instrument do not amount to a material change in procurement policy. They will ensure that the UK’s procurement system continues to function as intended at the end of the transition period and will grant certainty to UK contracting entities that they can continue to procure goods and services without substantial changes in the process. In that way, the Government are ensuring that those entities can continue to obtain value for money for UK taxpayers.

Principally, the instrument makes amendments to the three sets of regulations that implement EU directives on awarding contracts and concessions in the public and utilities sectors outside the field of defence and security. It seeks to provide a level of continuity for procurement procedures that began before the end of the transition period. Procurements that fall within that category, including orders from ongoing contracts such as framework agreements, will continue in substance to follow the unamended procurement regulations.

The instrument makes various amendments to the procurement regulations, to reflect recent amendments made to other domestic and retained direct EU legislation, for example in relation to the acceptable formats for advanced electronic signatures and the applicable rules for determining the origin of products. To enable the procurement regulations to reflect technological developments, and full and ongoing interoperability in electronic invoicing, a power has been conferred on the Minister for the Cabinet Office to make regulations to substitute a different e-invoicing standard or a different reference to the same standard, or to make changes to specific syntaxes for e-invoices.

The instruments disapplies, for the whole of the UK, the rights derived from article 18 of the treaty on the functioning of the European Union and parallel provisions in other agreements. Retaining those rights would leave a lack of clarity as to whether EU parties were in the scope of article 18 of the TFEU and therefore had additional rights in the UK compared with non-EU countries—for example, suppliers from the EU may be provided with additional rights compared with third-country suppliers.

The UK has been invited to accede to the Agreement on Government Procurement in its own right. The instrument contains contingency arrangements in case we are unable to legislate for GPA accession due to a delay in the Trade Bill. It mitigates the risk of a short gap in GPA membership by facilitating continued market access.

I have picked out some of the key features of the draft statutory instrument, but it does a lot of technical work. The particularly full explanatory memorandum to the instrument contains a lot of detail on the technical matters that I very much do not wish to detain the Committee with.

Left unamended, the existing regulations would not work as intended and the EU exit regulations made last year in the context of a no-deal scenario would come into force. That would amount to a breach of our international obligations and would cause confusion and uncertainty among procurers and suppliers, which would hamper the public sector’s ability to obtain value for money from procurement. I commend the regulations to the Committee.

[The Chair]

Hon. Members will be pleased to know that the debate can last until 4 o’clock.

--- Later in debate ---

[Julia Lopez]

I appreciate the hon. Member’s scrutiny. It is very important that we build public confidence in everything that we are trying to do on procurement. Ultimately, this is a narrow piece of legislation. We need to ensure that the public procurement regulatory regime will function after the end of the transition period, and that we have continuity and legal certainty for procurers and suppliers. There are many moving parts to the negotiations, and this is a belt and braces approach to ensure that all the legal details are tied up in time for the end of the transition period.

We are doing such things as transferring powers from the EU to the Cabinet Office, which will obviously happen once we are no longer in the transition period. The hon. Member asked about our e-tender service. I have spoken to officials about it, and I am assured that the new system, moving away from the EU’s notification system, will be up and running by 11 o’clock on 31 December. He rightly touched on our wider ambitions for public procurement and the Green Paper, which is currently in draft form. Ministers are starting to look through it, ensuring that it fits with our own ambitions for the work that we want to do on this area, particularly on social value.

The hon. Member talked about the need to simplify procedures to ensure that local authorities and officials understand the rules. That means not only simplifying everything that we are doing and helping businesses to access exciting public procurement opportunities, but ensuring that we have training in place for officials, both in central Government agencies and in local authorities, to understand the new rules and articulate them to businesses so that the system functions as a whole.

The hon. Member talked about procurement during the pandemic. I want to ensure that we retain public confidence in everything that we do on contracts that have been let. We are working with the National Audit Office on those issues. I am sure that we will have further opportunities to debate them in the House, including during Cabinet Office oral questions tomorrow. Ultimately, this is a very narrow amendment that tries to ensure that we have covered all bases when it comes to leaving the transition period, and I commend it to the Committee.

Question put and agreed to.

External Private Contractors: Government Use and Employment

Julia Lopez Excerpts

Wednesday 21st October 2020 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Julia Lopez)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard.

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Paula Barker) for securing the debate. The Government are the custodian of public money and it is very important that we retain the confidence of taxpayers about how that money is spent. It is similarly important that we have a robust, highly skilled civil service, with the expertise and capacity to deliver projects and services over the long term and at pace, and that we treat those in the private and public sectors who carry out work for the Government with respect. That is why I welcome not only the way in which the hon. Member has raised issues about external private contractors but the respectful way in which she makes her case.

The civil service has historically used contractors, working alongside civil servants, to provide additional capacity and specialist skills and to manage short-notice urgent requirements. Where it is cost-effective to do so and the requirement is temporary, this makes sense, but let me also be clear that we are focused on driving down the use of consultants, improving internal civil service capability and driving greater value. We will do this in a variety of ways: revamping our in-house training; looking again at procurement rules, particularly relating to social value; and continuing the work of my predecessor, now the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, in dealing with issues about outsourcing raised following the collapse of Carillion.

Consultants are used to provide advice on the strategy, structure, management or operations of an organisation, and where an external perspective may be helpful or even necessary. We also use professional services firms to support the implementation and delivery of services—for example, PwC supported the delivery of the reform programme for Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service—and we use contingent labour to fill gaps in business-as-usual or service delivery activities. It is also right to say that the civil service itself has grown in number over recent years, partly because of the EU exit operations but also because of covid. We have recruited an extra 6,000 civil servants in the Home Office, for instance, to tackle security, counter-terrorism, crime and policing issues.

I will now address some of the points made by the hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree. I met the leaders of the three civil service unions yesterday. I have not been in post for long, so it was simply an introductory meeting, but I know that some of those unions also represent workers within private sector contracting companies, and I will be very happy to look into some of the issues that she raised today about outsourced workers and their pay and conditions, particularly as regards sick pay.

Other Members have also raised issues about working conditions during the pandemic and it is important to say that not everybody can work over Zoom. In many ways, it is a privilege to be able to do so and not to have to go into an office. On the other hand, I am also aware many workers’ office jobs are not easily conducted at home, and it is important for the Government, as an employer, to provide safe work spaces, so that we can take into account those who are in shared or cramped accommodation.

The hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree also talked about delivering social value through contracts, and we quite agree. We recently took a new look at social value, considering how we take into account environmental factors in how contracts are delivered, whether a contractor is improving the skills of their workforce or their approach to apprenticeships, and so on. We will look at social value in quite a comprehensive way, because once the EU transition period has ended, we will be in a position to come up with a new procurement strategy. Indeed, we are working very hard to draw that up. She raised a number of issues about how we extract value from existing Government contracts, and I will take those away to consider them.

The hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mick Whitley) made a number of important points, but it is important that we recognise that we could not have responded to some of the challenges of the pandemic without expertise from both the public sector and the private sector. Again, I assure him that social value is at the heart of the new procurement strategy that we are drawing up, particularly on issues such as climate change and waste.

The hon. Member for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel) raised a number of important issues about track and trace. We all want this system to work. Let us not pretend that it has been perfect from the outset, but a lot of things have been done to improve that service and we are now conducting hundreds of thousands of tests daily. We hope to be on track to deliver—I do not want to get the number wrong, but there is certainly a much increased capacity when it comes to testing and we have ironed out some of the problems that we saw around September with demand on the system.

It is also important that we understand that this process is a partnership between national and local, and between public and private, and I think that it is naive to suggest that the public sector alone could have built up this service so quickly and delivered it at such a great pace. We appreciate the expertise that we have received from the private sector.

[Alex Sobel]

Local authorities can furlough staff, so many local authority staff who could not do their normal jobs were still employed by the local authority. There was capacity in local authorities to deliver this programme. Should that capacity not have been taken up and used before going to the private sector?

[Julia Lopez]

It is important to understand that the private sector has provided the framework for the system, with local authorities able to plug into that framework. The private sector provides the national call centres and so on, but a lot of the local expertise is provided at local level from healthcare experts on the ground, particularly in some of those harder-to-reach instances where we need to go knocking on people’s doors. Ultimately, we share the hon. Gentleman’s aim to improve the service and build plenty of public confidence in it because it is such a key tool in dealing with the pandemic.

The hon. Member for Stockport (Navendu Mishra) is a PCS union member, and I met his leader yesterday. It is important to remember that successive Governments of all colours use outsourcers. In a previous life, I was a councillor in Tower Hamlets. There were a number of outsourced contracts there and not very impressive in-house management of them, I should say. Outsourcers can provide a lot of expertise and capacity and it is naive to suggest that the public sector alone has all that capacity and expertise in house. Let us not do down some of the people who work for those contractors and bring a lot of capacity and sense to the system.

Both the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Kim Johnson) and the hon. Member for Leicester East (Claudia Webbe) seem to take an ideological view that effectively says private bad, public good. That is a great shame because it fails to acknowledge what the private sector can provide for public good.

[Claudia Webbe]

Leicester has been in extended measures and lockdown for the longest time, as the Minister will appreciate. On the test and trace system alone, the private contractors delivering that have a success rate of less than 50%. Our own local authority, which understands the issues, was able to deliver a success rate of more than 85%. That is the difference between the private and the public sector. That is the reality. It is not ideological; it is the reality on the ground. That is what is happening and it is serious.

[Julia Lopez]

I thank the hon. Lady for her comments. Does she believe that the local authority in Leicester would be capable of delivering a fully functioning test-and-trace system that would do all that such a system needs to do? I think that is not the case. The private sector has been able to achieve impressive things during the pandemic and provide a lot of public good at speed and in innovative ways. That has been critical in procurement of all manner of goods and services, from PPE to new diagnostics, which have been fundamental to how we have protected the public.

The hon. Member for Luton South (Rachel Hopkins) raised a number about the justice system, but I am afraid that, as a Cabinet Office Minister, I do not have the expertise on some of the issues she raises. I am happy to look into them for her and reply in writing. The hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) raised a number of issues on contractor pay. I am working on the very issue of value from contractors with my ministerial colleague, Lord Agnew. Some hon. Members may be aware that he has recently set out his concern about some of the reliance in Whitehall on management consultants and that we have infantilised civil servants and deprived some of our brightest public servants of

“opportunities to work on the most challenging, fulfilling and crunchy issues.”

Our reliance on consultants and other contractors can, at times, hinder the development of internal civil service capability. We have discussed that at length and are keen to improve what we do in terms of in-house learning capability and expertise.

I am always glad to see the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) in this Chamber. He talked about civil service churn and skills, and I reassure him that we want to upskill our civil service. We are looking again at the quality of our training, as I mentioned, and he might be interested in the comprehensive Ditchley lecture given by my right hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove), which talks about some of these issues.

There are many other issues to cover, but I am cognisant of the time. I reassure hon. Members that we need tighter controls around contractor expenditure, supported by better quality data and management information.

[Chris Stephens]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Julia Lopez]

I do not think I have time to give way. Mr Pritchard, what time does the debate finish?

[Mark Pritchard (in the Chair)]

The debate will finish at 5.41 pm.

[Julia Lopez]

I want to leave time for the hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree to respond, so I will not give way.

There will always be situations where it makes sense to use contractors, working alongside our high-quality civil servants, to deliver specialist advice and services and to tackle short-notice urgent requirements where the civil service does not have sufficient capacity. We also need to reverse the trend we have seen over recent years, which has eroded civil service capability and led to an over-reliance on consultants and other contractors.

Hon. Members raised a number of other issues today about outsourcing and I am happy to take them away. I thank the hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree again for her thoughtful contribution.

Leaving the EU

Julia Lopez Excerpts

Monday 5th October 2020 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Julia Lopez)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David. This is my first Westminster Hall debate since returning from maternity leave. I feel I should have contributed to the previous debate on what it is like to raise a baby during a pandemic as I am a little more qualified.

I have a strange feeling of déjà vu, as though nothing has changed in the year I have been away, but of course many things have changed. We have had a general election and we have left the EU. The language that we used in talking about Brexit today, as if it had not happened, is a little out of date.

I thank the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mike Hill) for presenting the debate on behalf of the Petitions Committee and for speaking on the three petitions. Hon. Members have put their arguments across with a great deal of vigour, but not rancour, which is a refreshing change from the previous Parliament.

In responding to the calls in the petitions to establish a public inquiry into the conduct of the 2016 EU referendum, or halt Brexit for a public inquiry, or to extend the transition period and delay negotiations, I can state that there are no plans to do any of those things. Two of the petitions focus on alleged breaches of electoral law in the 2016 referendum, but the allegations have been rightly investigated and dealt with by the Electoral Commission, the independent regulator. The case is now closed. Our focus should not be on returning to the divisions of the recent past, but on this country’s bright future.

I will consider various points in further detail: the evident legitimacy of the EU referendum, our stance on foreign interference, the important role of the Electoral Commission, and our future focus and ongoing negotiations with the EU. First, let me deal with the evident legitimacy of the EU referendum. Others have highlighted this today, but I shall repeat it: 17.4 million people voted to leave the EU. More people voted for Brexit than have ever voted for anything else in the UK. It is a pleasure to welcome my hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Nick Fletcher), who is a product of that will of the people.

People from across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland voted to leave the European Union. That clear mandate from the people of our Union has since been rightfully respected and delivered. Ignoring the referendum result would have been deeply damaging to British democracy. We saw the damage that the past three years of indecision in Parliament caused. Additionally, the legality of the EU referendum is beyond doubt. It was carried out based on legislation passed by Parliament with clear and repeated commitments from the Government to implement the outcome. The EU Referendum Act 2015 was scrutinised and debated in Parliament for more than 34 hours. The provisions relating to the conduct of the referendum were carefully scrutinised and ratified by Parliament.

More recently in the 2019 general election, the British people cast their votes once again and elected with a substantial majority a Government committed to upholding the result of the referendum. Following the election, Parliament voted with clear majorities in both Houses for the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Act 2020. On accusations of foreign interference, I emphasise that it is and always will be an absolute priority to protect the UK against foreign interference and maintain the security and integrity of our democratic processes. It is absolutely unacceptable for any nation, including Russia, to interfere in the democratic processes of another country, and we take any allegations of interference in the UK democratic processes by a foreign Government very seriously. We have seen no evidence of successful interference in the EU referendum. However, we will continue to safeguard against future risks, strengthen our resilience, and ensure that the regulatory framework is as effective as possible. The Government are committed to making sure the rules work now and in future. In July 2019 we established the Defending Democracy Programme, bringing together expertise and capabilities from across Departments, the security and intelligence agencies, and the civil service, to ensure that UK democracy remains open, vibrant and secure. As announced in the Queen’s Speech, we are bringing forward new legislation to provide the security services and law enforcement agencies with the tools that they need to disrupt hostile state activity.

Now I will turn to the important role of the Electoral Commission, which is the independent regulatory body responsible for ensuring that referenda are run effectively and in accordance with the law. The Electoral Commission has the right to conduct investigations into alleged offences, and to take action when offences have been committed. Such investigations are, rightly, independent of the Government. The Electoral Commission did indeed undertake investigations into the EU referendum and, regrettably, levied fines on multiple groups on both sides of the referendum campaign. In addition to the fines levied against leave campaigners, remain-supporting groups such as Unison and the GMB also breached political finance rules, and were fined by the Electoral Commission for failing to deliver an accurate spending return. More serious matters were referred to the police, who investigated them further and, again, found no evidence of criminal activity.

Focusing on the future, we have now entered the final phase of negotiations with the EU. Last week the ninth round of negotiations took place. There were positive discussions in the core areas of a trade and economic agreement—notably trade in goods and services, transport, energy, social security and participation in EU programmes. However, significant differences remain, notably on the level playing field and fisheries. The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster provided a written ministerial statement earlier today with an update on this round of negotiations. The Prime Minister spoke to President von der Leyen on 3 October to review the progress of negotiations. They agreed on the importance of finding an agreement if at all possible, and instructed the chief negotiators to work intensively to try to do so, given how short the time now is before the European Council on 15 October, when we hope we can find an agreement.

I am afraid that while I would like to answer with some specifics on the negotiations, it is a little above my pay grade, so I cannot do so on this occasion. Since the last round of negotiations, as set out in terms of reference, UK negotiators have continued in formal discussions with the Commission in Brussels and London. We have been clear from the outset about the principles underlying our approach. We are seeking a relationship that respects our sovereignty and has a free trade agreement at its core, similar to those that the EU has already agreed with like-minded countries such as Canada. As the Prime Minister has set out, there needs to be an agreement with the EU by the time of the European Council meeting on 15 October in order for it to be in force before the end of the transition period on 31 December. By then, if there is no agreement, there will not be a free trade agreement. That would mean that we would have a trading arrangement with the EU more akin to Australia’s. That would still be a good outcome for the UK. It would represent our reclaiming our independence as a sovereign nation. That is what the British people voted for twice. That said, we remain committed to working hard to reach an agreement by the middle of this month.

The Government were elected on a manifesto that made it clear that the transition period would end on 31 December 2020. That is now enshrined in UK law. At the second meeting of the withdrawal agreement Joint Committee on 12 June, the UK formally notified the EU that it will neither accept nor seek any extension to the transition period. Our position remains unchanged. Under no circumstances will the Government ask for or agree to an extension of the transition period. The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Lord True have kept both Houses informed of progress throughout the negotiations.

I would like now to turn to some of the issues raised by colleagues in this vigorous and lively debate. I welcome the work that the hon. Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) is doing to give her constituents a voice. It is right that we bring everyone together, in this next stage of our country’s journey. The International Trade Secretary has repeatedly given assurances on food standards. The Trade Bill is about the roll-over of existing FTAs; it is not about future ones.

I appreciate the contribution from the hon. Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Allan Dorans). I have always found it peculiar that his party has such distaste for the results of referenda at the same time as they call for more of them, and that they can so unreservedly champion petitions as a democratic device over a good old-fashioned election result.

I thank the hon. Member for Hartlepool for the gracious way in which he acknowledged that the majority of his constituents do not want to overturn the referendum result. He asked how the pandemic has affected the readiness of businesses. That has clearly been a challenge, and it was also raised by the hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield). Unfortunately, the pandemic has meant that businesses are, rightly, thinking of many other things. We are keen to get the message out that things will be changing for those who deal with the EU, whether or not we get an FTA. That message needs to be rammed home, because there is sometimes a misunderstanding in this place that everything will be the same if we get a deal. That is simply not the case, which is why we have done a lot of work on transition readiness. We now have a transition checker on gov.uk that people can go to for information on how to get ready for January, and I encourage people to look at it. We will also publish an updated border operating model this week.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton) rightly reminded us that we have left the EU. The public have made their views known about further delay, and we will not extend the transition period.

The hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer) drew an interesting comparison with the United States. The Government share many of his ambitions for how any future relationship should protect our sovereignty.

I welcome the contribution from my hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley in his first Westminster Hall debate, and on a subject about which he feels so passionately. He says we need to move on, and I agree. There is a difference between a petition and an election, as I mentioned earlier. In December, the public made their views clear.

I note that the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) is vastly more popular in her constituency than her party is with the rest of the country; I think that is because she makes her case so gracefully. I share her regret over the division that we have seen in recent years. I hope we can move on, united over the love that we have for our country.

My hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell) shared his exasperation that we have to reheat what is now a very old debate. I welcome his valuable work with the Council of Europe.

I wish to thank again the hon. Member for Hartlepool for securing the debate. We have heard a number of arguments on this topic, but I remain entirely unconvinced that we need to launch a public inquiry on the EU referendum or that we should halt Brexit, extend the transition period and delay negotiations. Indeed, the Government have absolutely no plan to do any of those things. Clear legitimacy underpins the EU referendum from the 17.4 million people across our Union who voted to leave and the legal scrutiny that was applied to the European Union Referendum Act 2015. In addition, we have made it clear on a number of occasions that we have not seen evidence of successful interference in the referendum, and allegations of electoral overspend have rightly been investigated and dealt with by the Electoral Commission. We now need to focus on our bright future, negotiating our future partnership with the EU and forging trade deals with the rest of the world.