Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what consideration his Department gives to the diversity policies and records of businesses or other organisations when considering their bid for commercial contracts or grants.

Core Defra follows Cabinet Office advice in meeting its obligations under the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED), which is part of the Equality Act 2010, when considering bids for commercial contracts or grants.

As part of our evaluation criteria we ask each bidder to provide evidence of their equality and diversity policy or an equivalent document which demonstrates their organisation's commitment to equality and diversity and which is compliant with the relevant legislation.

We ask each bidder to describe the steps they have taken to:

· monitor equality and diversity performance;

· implement training programmes for raising awareness;

· ensure staff and sub-contractors working on the contract comply appropriately with the relevant legislation;

· address cases of discrimination and other breaches and set out measures for preventing recurrences; and

· give the Department full confidence in their organisation's approach to equality and diversity.

A score is allocated to the bidder's response to these questions which forms part of the overall technical evaluation of the bid.