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There is concern from Wales. The Welsh Government has not recommended consent either, on that basis.

I will let officials comment on that, but, as I have said, my experience has been that engagement at ministerial level sometimes resolves things and sometimes it does not, but until you have the conversation, it is difficult to know the UK Government’s position.

The bill will be taken through in the rest of this year. We obviously want this to be resolved sooner rather than later.

It needs to be somebody who understands Scottish Government policy and the context within which we operate—somebody who understands our national strategy for economic transformation, our net zero activity, our global capital investment plan, our focus on infrastructure, our strategic transport plan and so on, and who is able to make the case as to why and how the infrastructure bank’s investments should be aligned with those priorities.

I am not sure whether Wales has made exactly the same case. It can speak for itself.

On the first point, as I said, the current situation is that Scottish law places requirements on bodies that are in devolved areas and bodies that are in reserved or cross-border areas are not included in that. This bill would cover them, so there is a different scope there.

On the practical effects, the problem is that the bill confers powers that could allow UK Government ministers to make changes to acts of the Scottish Parliament, so it is pretty broad and could cover a wide range of areas. The concern, therefore, is that we do not know whether it could have an impact, but it opens a door and what the UK Government chose to do with it would be a concern. We see issues because of the way in which the bill has been drafted and because it confers those powers. From our perspective, it is not acceptable for UK Government ministers to have the power to make changes to acts of the Scottish Parliament.

There have been discussions at official level and I am ready to engage with UK Government ministers when they are in place and able to talk on this. Obviously, when they are taking a bill through Westminster, they are considering a range of aspects from different quarters and there will be amendments on a range of things as the bill goes through. We are part of that process of engaging with them to make them aware of our concerns, which we have done, and to address what they may be able to do about it.

In similar situations that I have been involved in previously, sometimes we are able to resolve those through ministerial discussions and sometimes we are not. As we get to that next stage, we will talk about the implications of it directly with UK Government ministers and, hopefully, they will recognise that they are able to make changes to the bill that take account of those.

As I said before, the procurement scope within Scotland covers the devolved aspects, and presently reserved and cross-border bodies are not part of that mechanism or covered by that legislation. That reflects the situation as it stands now. I have responsibility for procurement and I work very closely with officials and others to ensure that the actions that we take on procurement support our policy objectives—community wealth building, sustainable procurement, more work going to Scottish businesses, more work going to small and medium-sized enterprises and so on. That is a relentless and on-going process and we look for every opportunity to take that forward. However, UK Government procurement has been outside that scope up until now and that would not change.

There seem to have been positive moves around that. I think that there is recognition that it makes sense. The details need to be worked through, but we hope that that will reach a positive conclusion.

Thank you, convener.

The Procurement Bill is intended to reform the regulation of public procurement, primarily in the rest of the UK. The UK Government is keen to present it as a Brexit opportunity, but that ignores the fact that in Scotland we were able to reform public procurement while being a member of the European Union. The Procurement Reform (Scotland) Act 2014 placed a sustainable procurement duty on authorities to consider the economic, social and environmental wellbeing impact of a procurement exercise in their area. It increased transparency by requiring contracts to be advertised on one single portal and requiring that authorities publish a pipeline of expected contracts. The act also contained measures on community benefits, reporting and contracts for health and social care, all of which is compliant with EU rules.

Where the UK bill is most noticeably doing something different is in introducing new flexibility for buyers to design procurement procedures. It says that that will allow for a more responsive procurement system but will also mean that companies will potentially come across a new way of doing things every single time they bid, which will be different again from how contracts are awarded in the EU. We do not share the UK Government’s enthusiasm for dumping EU rules for the sake of being seen to do something. For the most part, therefore, the bill will have no practical effect in Scotland.

There are three specific ways in which the bill engages with the LCM process, however. First, it seeks to regulate the procurement activities of reserved and cross-border bodies operating in Scotland. That mirrors the approach to scope and extent in the Procurement Reform (Scotland) Act 2014, which excludes bodies exercising reserved functions, meaning that they are not covered by the sustainable procurement duty, for example. To that end, it is not unreasonable for them to be subject to this bill, but at present I cannot recommend that the Parliament consents to that, given the concerns that we have with other parts of the bill.

The second area in which the bill touches on devolved competence is cross-border procurement. Frameworks or similar agreements that are awarded under the new UK rules will not be compliant with the Scottish rules and devolved authorities in Scotland would not be able to use those arrangements. Similarly, UK bodies would not be able to use arrangements that are put in place under the Scottish rules. That is a practical issue that needs to be addressed, because buyers from both sides of the border co-operate with each other when it makes sense to do so.

The way in which the issue is addressed in the bill is unacceptable, however. The bill creates powers to address the issue through secondary legislation. Some of those are in devolved areas and are conferred on UK ministers without any requirement to secure the consent of the Scottish ministers before exercise. They are drafted very broadly, including a provision that would allow UK ministers to modify an act of the Scottish Parliament.

Finally, the third area in which the Procurement Bill touches on devolved competence is a power to implement international agreements relating to procurement. We agree that such a power is necessary. However, the power as presented is too broad and is conferred concurrently on UK and Scottish ministers with no requirement on UK ministers to secure the consent of the Scottish ministers before its exercise in devolved matters. There is no justification for that and I cannot recommend consenting to it.

It is a matter of regret that the UK Government did not engage with us more fully in the drafting of those elements of the Procurement Bill in order to arrive at a proposition that was acceptable. Had it done so, we could potentially have recommended consent. We remain in discussions with the UK Government about its plans and I hope that we may be able to secure some improvements, particularly on the practical issue of cross-border procurement, but we are not there yet. Therefore, for now I cannot recommend consent to the bill as it stands.