Public Audit Committee, 04 Nov 2009

Meeting date: Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Official Report 160KB pdf

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Section 23 Report

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“Improving public sector purchasing”

Agenda item 5 is consideration of correspondence from the accountable officer on the Auditor General's section 23 report "Improving public sector purchasing". Again, I think that we have been given a fairly full response to our questions. Do members have any questions or comments about the response?

On the "Local businesses" section on page 3 of the response, I am encouraged by the comment that the Government will focus on allowing local businesses to participate in the grander procurement process, but I would like to see some evidence further along the line on whether that turns out to be the case. Examples from my constituency certainly suggest some concern about the extent to which local businesses can participate in the procurement process. Although the criteria may change as we move through the exercise, we should perhaps issue a wee caution that we need to see evidence that local businesses do not suffer any detriment in the procurement process.

I concur with Willie Coffey's remarks. All members have experience of local businesses raising such matters with them.

On the "Standard terms and conditions" section on page 5 of the response, members will recall that we raised that point with the Government because the fact that different branches of the public sector utilise completely different terms and conditions makes it very difficult for tenderers—in particular, smaller organisations—to comply with them all. However, the final paragraph of the response states:

"It is not possible to say when standard terms and conditions will be introduced, as there is no guarantee that consensus on a single standard can be reached."

I appreciate the difficulty that standardisation might present, but I think that we should encourage the Government to achieve that by providing leadership at the centre. The advantage of having standard terms and conditions would be tremendous, as it would help businesses that are seeking to win contracts. We should encourage the Government to do more to achieve that.

Do we agree to write back to Stella Manzie to ask why it is not possible to say when standard terms and conditions will be introduced and what difficulties are anticipated that might result in failure to reach consensus on a single standard?

On Willie Coffey's point, shall we write back to ask for further clarification on the policy on local procurement?

We just need some assurance that local small businesses can participate fully and do not lose out in the procurement process. We just want to see proof of that.

Okay. We will ask for that.

On Murdo Fraser's point, I agree that we should ask the questions that the convener suggested, but I also think that it would not be unreasonable for us to ask for a target date. The Government sets target dates on all sorts of things that it does not have the ability to implement directly, such as in cases when delivery is provided by local government. Public procurement is a clear example on which the Government could show some leadership by fixing a target date. At the moment, there seems to be no will to do so.

We can ask for that as well. We agree that we will take forward that work.

Agenda item 6 is the start of our private deliberations, so I must draw the public part of the meeting to a close.

Meeting continued in private until 11:53.