 Rwy'n gwych i'n ddiwedd y 7 ysgoleth 2024 o'r Cymru a Ffair Work Cymru. Yr 1st ystafell yn ymddynt yno, mae'n ddysgu yn ymddynt 3, a'r cwrs cyffredinol ymddynt yn ei gwyllwch. Yn y ddysgu ymddynt yno, mae'n ddysgu'n ddysgu'n gweithio'r prifysgolau i gyfreumat yn y Tydwdd Cymru yw Llywodraeth Cymru yn Ysgoleth 2014. The committee will hear from two panels this morning, and I'm pleased to be joined first by Pauline Gordon, partnership manager at the TSI Scotland Network, David Livy, policy and public affairs manager at the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations, and Duncan Thorpe, policy and public affairs manager at the Social Enterprise in Scotland. If all members and witnesses can keep their questions and answers as concise as possible, we'll get through as much evidence as we can this morning. If I may be come to a first opening question, which should be around what benefits you have seen since the 2014 act was implemented and what might be some of the key challenges that remain, and thank you for panellists who submitted written submissions. I may be come to the SCVO first of all and to David. In the paper that you provided, David, you said that ideals of community wealth building, sustainable procurement and a wellbeing economy, risk being reduced to mere rhetoric without a procurement system that is centered on outcomes and impact. Do you feel that the 2014 act is living on that, or where are the key challenges that are making that difficult? First of all, thank you very much for having us long today to hear from us on this important issue. I'll come first to the act, which I think is fair to say that the SCVO viewed as promising legislation at the time it was passed, introducing a welcome number of reforms. Crucially, the act requires public body's procurement processes to be open to third sector organisations, which we, of course, very much welcomed. Ultimately, despite that being one of the stated aims of the act, the significant efforts of officials within the Scottish Government, which have been good, significant barriers still exist for voluntary organisations and practice. That is a bit of a missed opportunity, not just for the voluntary organisations that we represent, but for public services here in Scotland as well, where we are missing out on the expertise, ingenuity and the resourcefulness of those voluntary organisations across the country. I think that the panel would generally agree that there is a bit of an implementation gap between what's in the act itself and what's happening on the ground. Over many years, a lot of time and effort has gone into the process-led resource-driven, resource-intensive commissioning and procurement practice that we have today. That takes time to unpick in practice. I think that all too often in our experience and the feedback that we get from our members, the practice is process-driven and values are price above all else all too often. I think that needs to change, especially if community wealth building is to be a success. Obviously, one of the key pillars of community wealth building is spending. Procurement is a huge part of that. We need to get procurement practice right to get community wealth building right. In its place of the existing procurement practice that we have here in Scotland to practice in the culture, we need to see a person-centred outcomes-focused approach to commissioning procurement practice, one that values the contribution of the voluntary sector and fosters collaboration over competition, I would say. I can get a bit more into some of the barriers and solutions. There will be opportunities with other questions. In the paper that you provided about this, it makes it important to distinguish between commissioning and procurement. You have spoken about both in the answer. Does the 2014 act recognise the role of commissioning enough? Does those two things cooperate enough for the third sector when it comes to procurement? I think that the issue would mostly be in the practice that, in our experience and the experience of our members, there is a defaulting to procurement. One perhaps it isn't necessary and this is something that CCPS is doing good work on. They commissioned a legal firm to do a bit of a myth-busting document on the alternatives to procurement in regards to health and social care. I think that the issue would be that, in practice, there is a defaulting to procurement and that would be the biggest issue. The whole process and the culture around procurement can be quite exclusionary to third sector organisations, particularly small ones. I have a similar question for you, Pauline, on the key changes since 2014 and what are the biggest challenges that remain? There are still challenges, clearly. I will touch on the commissioning procurement question at the end of the question. You have specifically answered my question, but it is fair to say that, although there are challenges in almost every third sector event that I go to to talk about the issues for the sector, procurement comes up. Clearly, we cannot be complacent, but in saying that, I think that we need to recognise and acknowledge that the act itself has made significant improvements and, prior to the act, the procurement reform programme over 10, 12 years, which I was on the journey of, on the back of a McClellan review, was transformed public procurement in Scotland. That was prior to the act coming into play. We had a great foundation from which to build in terms of improving process and practice. There is greater transparency and greater cohesion on the whole ecosystem around procurement. There is a lack, I think, in the act itself of that relationship, a really important relationship between commissioners and procurement. We talk about the commissioning and procurement community, but they are not actually a community as they ought to be. I would like to see the providers playing into that community, because we all want the same outcomes for the people of Scotland. We all want to maximise the social impact that we can get from our procurement spend. We have a brilliant legislative framework at the national level. I do not think that there is much that I would change. While it does lack that commissioning angle and importance, particularly commissioning is important for me when we think about third sector role in people services, so health and social care in its broadest sense. The Government has put into play good practice on commissioning specific to social care or healthcare. I think those should be read alongside the procurement legislation and guidance itself. There are other bits that play into that, but I do not think that that is cohesive enough yet. I just want to acknowledge that we should be proud of procurement legislation in Scotland. We are kind of leading the way, but we should not rest in our lordals. There are many other things to do, because I say that the third sector is so diverse. It is not a homogeneous sector. It operates in lots of industry sectors. Some are very, very community-based and some are large, and they tend to be the ones that have the skills capacity to enter procurement and get a good foothold on public procurement, whereas the smaller ones tend not to. In that sense, our sectors also have a responsibility to get our sector to collaborate better in ensuring that those small community-based specialist services can access procurement spend the same as the larger ones can. Okay, thank you. I now come to Duncan. It is the same question to Duncan around the 2014 act, what are the kind of big changes that is introduced and what has been positive about it and what still needs to be tackled? First, I agree and echo what has been said. I think that the 2014 act was really a culmination of a variety of pieces of work, a variety of conversations around procurement. A lot had been done before that point, but I think that it was that kind of coming together of policy makers in the sector just to really talk about social and environmental impact for the first time properly in a legislative sense as well. I think that it was really important to have that kind of tipping point in terms of procurement at that point. It absolutely did change the conversation. I think that the legislation itself is very good, actually. I think that it is a very good piece of legislation. I think that it was well consulted on at the time, I think that it is fair to say. The various sectors of voices were heard in that process, I think, quite well. But again, it is something that we will probably keep coming back to, but it is that policy implementation side, I think, which obviously the process we are taking part in now is part of that in terms of that scrutiny. It is kind of like, how does that legislation translate down into local communities? That is, I suppose, the main very broad general barrier at the moment is how is it translating into the real world, effectively, which we do find as an issue with any form of legislation, really, is how does that good, strong legislation translate into changing people's lives in local communities? The committee did visit Dovetail's social enterprise, and Dundee is part of our look into the gap in the disability employment, or look into a disability employment gap. Lyra's social enterprise, we did have a chat with Emma about procurement. That was part of the bill, but I am trying to remember what happened in 2014, but part of it was around supported workplaces and how do we make sure that they have opportunities to enter into big procurement contracts or to have procurement contracts. Is that an area that you think the 2014 act has delivered enough on? In terms of size of contracts, you mean, or...? In terms of those social enterprises, whether that is a supported workplace or other types of social enterprises, but getting enough opportunity to win procurement contracts, or has the system that is being created probably not intentionally, but is excluding social enterprises from this opportunity? I think it is a bit of both. Again, it is to a certain extent that it has changed things, I think, because it is just not enough that we would want, I guess. I guess one of the barriers is that kind of size of social enterprise. If it is a small social enterprise, which most social enterprises are, they are not going to be able to bid for those really big contracts. It is something that we hear quite a lot, I guess, in terms of procurement conversations. In terms of, yes, to a certain extent, it has opened up opportunities. We can see by our survey in terms of results that there are social enterprises winning contracts, sometimes quite significant contracts, but it is really just only to a certain point. It is just trying to really, again, part of the community wealth building conversation, the kind of a transformation conversation. It is part of that wider thing of just getting that real tipping point. Okay, I move on to Evelyn Tweed. Good morning, panel, and thanks for your answers so far. It is really good to hear that the act has been positive in certain respects. My questions are about procurement and price, and I noted David's earlier comment. For the committee's benefit, to what extent does price remain the determining factor in decisions to award contracts? Pauline, you are smiling. I am smiling because it always comes up, thank you for your question. There is a perception if you are a supplier and you do not win a contract, that price has been a significant factor or more of a significant factor than it ought to be. Awarding contracts solely on price is not permitted. It is already written into the 2015 regulations, so that should have put it to bed in my view, but it hasn't. I think that perhaps is a perception because if we looked into awarding of contracts and scrutinised them, I am quite sure that the reason for awarding contract would be based on the balance of price and the qualitative question. It has improved and the factor that is written into the regulations now is really important for me because we can then challenge when we think it looks like it has been awarded on price solely as a criterion. I agree with Pauline. It really just depends on the waiting, so the Scottish Government had done a bit of research in September 2022 into the experience of third sector organisations in the procurement system. One of the quotes in there from our respondent was, if the price waiting is 40 per cent and the quality is almost irrelevant, I was speaking recently to an employability provider operating in the third sector who referred to the fact that they recently lost out on price despite the fact that what they were offering was scored as 20 per cent better in terms of quality. I think that there is a real question on value for money that doesn't just focus on price because, obviously, there is a lot more to consider in terms of the social, environmental and economic wellbeing imperatives that are set out in the act and also in terms of the quality of public services that are being delivered. As Pauline said, in the legislation, it cannot just be price that is taken into account, but I think that it is against that real world application of legislation. And commissioners looking at legislation and thinking, how do I interpret that legislation really in terms of balancing price and social, environmental impact, et cetera? I think there's a real issue with that kind of real world interpretation. So, they do have to take into account these alternative considerations, not just cost, but I think we can empathise with public bodies in terms of the financial restraints they're under, I think, as well. And we can certainly understand where they're coming from in that sense as well in terms of making that balance, but it's not an easy answer, I guess, in a way. It's a cultural change thing, I think, in some ways as well. So, they do have that legal requirement, but it's also making that mental shift, I guess, in terms of taking into consideration all those different factors. Do you think there's any way that we can strengthen this to make sure there isn't that sort of focus on price? I think strengthening the implementation of the sustainable procurement duty would help, because its focus is very much on three components. One, what you're buying in the area you're buying at, how can you, before you buy anything, think about how you can get maximised the social, environmental or addressing inequalities as part of the how you buy. So the spend should ripple through the procurement spend for me, if you get that bit right. The second bit is about engaging with the market, and clearly we want more third sector engagement before things are bought. And the third component, of course, is around innovation. And certainly, if you get all those components to play in, you're going to get a much less focus on price and the richer benefits that you'll get through the components of the sustainable procurement duty. The Scottish Government have done research to be fair, which has looked at how well is it being implemented currently, and we have to learn from that. So there's definite improvements on components two and three, so they're not engaging with the market, pre-going to the market. And thirdly, they're not using innovation as perhaps they could be. So that's how I would want to see it addressed. You agree with Pauline on that. Just for the committee's benefits, we're talking about the Public Contract Scotland Regulation 2015 and that, just to demonstrate the flexibility that exists within that, so a contracting authority may not use price only or cost only is the sole award criteria. So that's what we're saying in terms of the waiting is what really comes down to it. I probably disagree with what's already been said, to be honest. I think that's a fair point. Okay, can I just ask—the SCVO submission we received did highlight that the Scottish Government's bending review highlights procurement as an area where efficiencies could be achieved, and do you have concerns that put further pressure on cost components of bits? So we did pass the budget yesterday and we know the pressures that are on Scottish bending, but do you have any concerns that procurement has been seen as an area where we could gain efficiencies? Does that have—that's an area that you've highlighted in the paper? Yes, I think that we generally have concerns around the fairness of funding for the sector, and that applies not only to accure contracts but also to grant funding as well. This is something that we've been talking about for a long time, and it's the—obviously there's significant financial challenges here in Scotland at this time, but those are also being referred down to the third sector level. Organisations have actually been put at risk because of the funding environment. I'm speaking with someone last Friday from the third sector employability forum who reported that there's seen small organisations closed because they can't make the existing funding models work. Recently, the news that a large organisation closing its doors after 47 years for the same reason. So there's a real difficulty in terms of organisations being able to put the—make the funding models work and the current climate, I would say, so we'd have concerns around that, yes. Mr Whittle, do you wish—if there's a quick supplementary before we bring in more. Thank you. Good morning, panel. Just on the waiting towards cost here, I understand that the new legislation says that we have to take into account things like—I mean, I've got a big interest in food procurement, but we have to take into account food miles, quality of food, nutrition and all that. I'm not doing that. I think that it's a false economy, but if—what I'm finding from the councils is that if there's a significant contract out there that could be split into smaller contracts, it's easier for the councils just to go to one—out source to one place to gather that contract together. Is that an impairment to organisations that you represent actually by taking in that procurement process? That's a great question. If we think about economies of scale at times, aren't they necessary? For me, it's about understanding why they're going to the market in the way they are, and I would absolutely agree with you that we want behind the scenes all of the whole life costing environmental impact before they go to the market to be taken into consideration. If going for one large contract to get economies of scale and hopefully not just get one provider, but maybe try to get some providers in that, then that's the right thing to do. Any procurement for me needs to be underpinned by a rationale or a business case as to why they're doing it. So, there's no right or wrong to it as long as it's underpinned by a clear rationale as to why they're doing it that way. So, yeah, great question. Just to mention the Scottish Government's own research, that's one of the conclusions in there, so I'd commend that to the committee. May I come back to this very briefly? We talked a lot about commissioning and procurement, and I think just to say it's very important that we remember that commissioning and procurement need to work in tandem, yes, but commissioning is the planning end, so good commissioning doesn't always lead to procurement, doesn't have to lead to procurement if it's not the right decision, if you're buying a service on behalf of the public body, yes. However, commissioning can go other ways in really innovative ways, and there is some real law of good practice in Scotland about good commissioning practice, particularly through health and social care strategic planning arrangements where they've really got it right. They know their population, they know the needs of that population, and certain services don't have to go to procurement, and there's a cost to procurement, and that brings me back to the efficiencies. We can create efficiencies if we don't, by default, go to competitive tendering. Thank you very much, convener, and I'm going to play devil's advocate here given the answer that Pauline has just given us. And we have heard, certainly I've heard as a MSP on numerous occasions, that a good piece of work has been done in terms of commissioning, which has led to procurement, and then the procurement itself has become process driven. Folks say that the accountants and solicitors are more in the driving seat than those folks who actually know what is required on the front line. Is that still a difficulty that is encountered on a regular basis, would you say, Pauline? That's a great question again. Thank you. Would I say a regular basis? I would say a too-often basis, perhaps, but you're absolutely right. Good commissioning at the front end, if it leads to procurement, and I've been involved in talking to commissioners where I think, oh, they've really got this right, and then it's gone to procurement and the processes have come into play. We've lost sight of the service quality, we've lost sight of the people whom those services are designed for, and we haven't spoken to the providers. Third sector has a big role to play and a big contribution to make to people's services in Scotland. Therefore, if the procurement doesn't go right, and I'll give you an example where it's too regular, is that the financial model around the procurement end process driven is based on a financial model, which is about cost and volume, based on output activities, interventions that are restricted, it treats everyone like they have the same circumstance, they don't, people are unique, they have different circumstances in their lives and therefore we lose sight of the person centred. Not only that, the big third sector organisations have the capacity to go for those larger contracts that they can take the risk whereas the smaller specialist providers are prohibited because they can't meet the volume requirements and they can't take the risk on the cash flow. If you don't get that right, even if the commissioning leading up to that procurement has been a really good practice, then we'll get the same out, we'll get the same output, I think. Still a difficulty in some places, some areas of business where the accountants and solicitors are probably too much in the drive-in seat rather than those in the front line. You mentioned people there and this is the key thing in all of this because you talked yourself earlier on about delivering for the people of Scotland. Do you think that people themselves, in certain cases, the populace at large, are utilised enough in terms of some of that commissioning work, particularly specialist commissioning work, which has an impact in their day-to-day lives? We're seeing a lot more of it and I think we are embracing the fact that Scotland has its own unique Scottish approach to service to sign, which we try and encourage use of all the time, so that gives you the service user voice, it gives you a lived experience voice to inform the commissioning before it goes anywhere near procurement and I think that's a great thing. I wonder if David or Duncan want to pick up on those questions. Yes, just to follow on from what Pauline was saying there, we would agree that commissioning and procurement should involve people, communities and providers in the co-design of services. Obviously, I'll use an example particularly true in the health and social care space and coalition care and support providers in Scotland have done a lot of really good work in that space on collaborative commissioning, commissioning for outcomes, which is obviously a word of the committee's attention, but I think it's summed up the independent review of adult social care in 2021. Talking about this, commissioners should focus on establishing a system where a range of people, including people with lived experience, unpaid carers, local communities, providers and other professionals are routinely involved in the co-design and redesign, as well as monitoring of services and supports. That system should form the basis of a collaborative rights-based and participative approach. I think that there's not much that's pretty difficult to disagree with anything in there. I wouldn't disagree with anything about that either, but you've given a lot of the positives there. Do you think that there's still too much interference by the bureaucratic sometimes nonsense of accountants and solicitors who don't have the experience of what's required in the front line for people? I think that I'm unable to say how these things come to pass, but certainly the experience of voluntary organisations that, in these procurement processes, they're just asked things that are told to the point of application, give evidence of things that aren't particularly relevant to the service that they're tendering for. It's things like excessive insurance of £10 million for a £70,000 contract or accreditation that's not particularly required. It suggests to me a risk-averse approach to procurement, and that's the experience of the voluntary sector coming out the other end. I'm not entirely sure what the source of the issue is. You're perhaps no better than me. I'm surprised that our members haven't come up with some of them. I wonder if Duncan's got anything. SCVO did provide six suggestions. One of them includes necessary accreditations. In the written submission, they can give us suggestions for improvements. Duncan, do you have anything to add? I can just pick up on a few of those points. The starting point should really be about outcomes, economic and social outcomes for communities, and then the process should come after that. We're starting with process, talking about process a lot, without really thinking about what we're actually trying to do here with procurement. In terms of those processes, as I've mentioned already, early stage involvement of communities and community groups think is really, really important. Even designing some of those processes in the first place that are very early stages think is very important. Just picking that point about bigger contracts, really. It's a perennial thing that comes up all the time about bigger contracts, and all contracts are too big, and social enterprises aren't big enough to bid for them. There has been a lot of work done around this in terms of breaking down contracts and consortium work, getting small organisations to come together, but I think we need to do far more, certainly, around that. In terms of those barriers, I think it's probably fair to say that you often find really good procurement officers who really want to do procurement well and want to work with local organisations and really understand the sector sometimes, not all of them, I'm sure, but a lot of them do understand the sector and the needs of social enterprises and charities, but they are facing those barriers perhaps within local authorities and public bodies from legal and audit, etc. Just to really drive forward that agenda, and they're facing those barriers, often by risk averse officials. Risk aversity is one of the things that's mentioned at a fair amount, and I think that you've given some good examples. Thank you, convener. Good morning to the panel. I'd like to ask a slightly different question which is around the impact on local economies and local businesses. I've been on the predecessor to this committee over many years, and it's an issue that continually comes up when we talk about procurement to the extent to which we're able to use the very large pool of procurement funds run either by national public bodies, by NHS boards, or by local councils to support local businesses, and every time we speak to the business community it's a key ask. I suppose my question is, to what extent do you think the new or newish legislative framework we have does a decent job of ensuring money is spent more locally? I don't have you on the start. So it's a very important question, and I have to say that although we are here representing the voluntary sector in its broadest sense, we work very closely with our colleagues from FSB and STDI, etc. So a lot of the concerns are similar if you're of a similar size. So we're certainly, we work well with them. In terms of local, I think that comes down to better engagement in the area in which you operate. So back to what the sustainable procurement duty says they ought to be doing, is understand your local market, what does it look like, what do providers look like, where do they come from and what can they provide. If you're seeking innovation, you won't get innovation until you know who's out there to provide it. So the local dimension, whilst it's always been an issue for procurement, we would love to say for procurement specifications to say by locally, please. Now that won't happen, but there are lots of ways you can achieve that by the way you can structure community benefits, for example, the way you engage your local providers, the way you give references within your specification that would automatically lead you to local suppliers, but you're not saying the word local. Now, this is going to become even more important if we're going to enrich local economies and local supply chains and make them more resilient when the community wealth building comes into play and the spend pillar in conjunction with those other pillars of community wealth building are going to be pivotal to a greater impact. So procurement is really, really important in that context and that, I think, if we get that right on local strategies for community wealth building, we will get better outcomes for local business. Okay, thank you very much for that. Before I bring in the other, I just want to follow up one point. Do you think that everything you've talked about is possible under the current framework and it's just a matter of practice as opposed to the rules? There's a lot of good practice, but there's a lot of things that work against it still, and I think we have to be honest about those. Sometimes it's about we don't have any local providers, you know, and sometimes people, commissioners will ask me to look at third sector provision in an area of Glasgow that I can't fulfil that requirement because I don't have any there, and that would be the same for business, but I think we could definitely get better at it if I may say so. David, do you want to come in? Yeah, I think I would, I won't repeat what Pauline just said, I think I'd agree with much of that. I think the issue is the same as the issue with smaller charities, so what the time that charities that operate just within a local area will be smaller and they will come up against the barriers that a smaller charity would have with grappling, with the procurement process, and I was, you know, there's a tend of penny about speaking to one the other week saying that the timescales and experience needed to compete in these processes, marginalise those closest to the communities that they serve. I think that that is the main thing I'd want to say on that, that it can be quite exclusionary to smaller charities and that will be those with solely a local focus. Yeah, I mean, I think that point around, I suppose, shared values with small businesses, you know, mainstream small businesses, social enterprises, small charities are certainly a lot of, a lot of, we can relate to that I think in terms of those different organisations because of the size of the organisation. I think we should have local by default, yeah, absolutely, if a, you know, commissioner can, you know, get goods and services at a local level, they absolutely should do that, but I think it's a fair point as well to say those suppliers are not always there so it's difficult for commissioners to always have that kind of local by default mentality. I think the stats are quite good if you look at, you know, the spend with SMEs, not small businesses, you know, that's different, but SMEs in general is 80% of Scottish government spend is with SMEs, which is very impressive actually, but I guess for us it's a case of, you know, the stats don't really report on, you know, the social enterprise element of that, it's not really very clear what element of that is social enterprise and charities and similar organisations actually, so those stats, that reporting needs to be improved certainly. And that point about community wealth building, absolutely, yeah, procurement is a big important pillar in terms of community wealth building, so we need to make sure that the procurement reform process is really integrated with that wider policy agenda, which we do very strongly support. I think community wealth building has a lot of potential, but we need to make sure we get procurement right as part of that process. Great, all right, thank you. Thank you. Gordon Macdonald will be followed by Colin Beattie. Thanks, convener. Good morning, panel. Just talking about the procurement public contract Scotland website, obviously when it was launched back in 2008 allowed public contracts to be offered to a wider range of suppliers, but what's your current experience of it, or your members' experience of it, is it still accessible and how transparent is it? I'll start. Thank you for your question. First of all, isn't it wonderful that we've actually got a single procurement portal in Scotland? I'll say a lot of negative things as well, but I think that we should be acknowledge the good things. We argued for that at Post McClellan. It was very haphazard. Everybody had their own procurement systems, and it was very difficult to navigate for suppliers. We have a single portal. It has improved. We all have the benefit from our organisations of a continual dialogue with the Scottish Government around the procurement supply group, again with our colleagues from FSB, etc. We talk all the time about suppliers issues, which again is great because we're not losing sight of any of that, and PCS, the system itself, comes up quite a lot. It's difficult to navigate if you're not used to it, particularly if you're a small supplier in the third sector. It's very daunting, so you have to hold people's hands going through the system, and then you have the e-tender system as well. It's not as clunky as it first was, may I say. There have been improvements, and it's fair to the Scottish Government policy team who facilitate our on-going dialogue. They listen to concerns that suppliers tell us and we tell them. It might take some time for improvements to be making the whole system a bit less clunky, but we've seen improvements, and we can probably still see improvements going forward. Just before I bring in David Duncan, I wanted to come back to you on difficult to navigate and daunting, because the website carries out a customer satisfaction survey, and it found that 60 per cent of the people who took part were either micro or small employers, and 80 per cent found the website either moderately to extremely easy. You're saying that it's daunting and difficult to manage, but the evidence from 1,600 customers that used the website found the opposite. I would clarify that by seeing smaller suppliers in the third sector that are not used to procurement. Some of them are not even on public contracts Scotland, and I am encouraging them to do so, and they will hold their hand to get them on to there. For example, quick quotes. You're not visible to the buyer unless you're on PCS, even if you're a small supplier. The quick quotes are really beneficial. It's a great opportunity for small suppliers, and if you're not on, you're not visible. I accept absolutely that the system works really well as a single portal, albeit that it's a complex area, so I would say that it's just for the small suppliers. I would say that many social enterprises are not even on the portal, because they're intimidated by it to even get on it in the first place. That's a fair point to make, actually. I think in terms of PCS, I absolutely would echo that point that it's really good that it's there. It's one portal, which is a great development. It has been improved. There is an improvement process I think happening behind the scenes as well currently around making it better. One of those key points would be for commissioners, not suppliers like us, but commissioners, to basically search by type of organisation in terms of social impact, which I don't think is currently there. I don't think that's been changed yet, but that is certainly in that reform process at the moment, so those kind of changes I think will be really powerful so that commissioners can really drive their social impact by actually finding suppliers a bit easier, I think. But yeah, it's good that it's there and I'm glad there's a reform process happening, I think, so we need to obviously keep pushing as organisations to make sure that happens. And David, can you understand what improvements it can make, but in your evidence you highlighted that £1.8 billion, 25 per cent of the sector's income comes from contracts, it's doubled since 2007, and between 2018 and 2021 it increased again by half a billion pounds, so what changes would you like to see that would increase that share? I've got a fair few, so I can run through them. So one thing we've talked about already is adopting a partnership approach to commissioning. In particular to the website itself? Oh, in particular to the website itself. Some of my colleagues will ask you about other questions. Got you, got you, okay. Well, I think that what Duncan's already touched on in terms of the work behind the scenes going into improving the website, I mean that there is some feedback that comes through in the Scottish Government's research about it being cumbersome or difficult to use, as Pauline said, particular for smaller organisations, but I think the work that the Scottish Government officials are doing behind the scenes is very welcome and I think my chief executive Anna is very complimentary of the work that they do behind the scenes. They are very much listened. Okay, thanks very much. Okay, thank you. Colin Beattie, sorry to be followed by Colin Speth. Thank you, convener. David, I'm going to direct this question at yourself, but I'm sure it's applicable to the others too. You've highlighted that the majority of members who've bid for public contracts have either a negative or a neutral opinion of the process. There doesn't seem to be any very positive. Can you expand a little bit in detail of the issues that your members encounter and how could the accessibility of the system be improved? There is no problem, so I think what you're referring to there is the research that we did in partnership with Social and Price Scotland. In terms of barriers, I've touched on this a bit already, but lack of capacity, particularly within smaller organisations, and that comes through in the research as well. I just don't have the resource or time staff to engage with the procurement process. Complex procurement processes, as I've said, require information that's not necessarily proportionate, relevant to the scope of work or the value of the contract. Lack of consistency across public bodies, so a person I was talking to last week from the third section employability forum, they've bid for contracts across 32 local authorities. None of them really use a consistent approach. As I already mentioned, so central procurement systems can be difficult to use, like PCS, insufficient pre-bid engagement with providers, insufficient lotting of contracts and effective use of framework agreements, lack of feedback from public bodies if they're unsuccessful in bidding, and big ones are insufficient funding for the value of the contract and short contracts as well. So contracts of a year or sometimes less mean that charities had to take on and absorb quite a big risk there. But sorry, that was a whistle-stop tour. The answer is your question. In terms of the contract you referred to, are you saying that all contracts are for a year? Sure not. No, no, but many are. So we've talked about for a long time now the importance of multi-annual funding. I was reading recently, actually, in preparation for the committee session today, the fair funding statement that we signed with STUC, CCPS, UNITE and Unison, calling for five-year contracts for third sector organisations. That was back in 2009. That was then cited in the Christie commission. Longer contracts would allow voluntary organisations to be able to plan for work and not on this year-by-year basis have to go through the difficulties of, for example, considering redundancies or the like. Also, if a contract is a year, it can sometimes be less if a local authority, for example, is late in going out to procurement. Last year, in the employability space, local authorities went out for procurement for a year-long contract in August and awarded the contract in September. I think that there is room for improvement in practice in moving to multi-annual frameworks for funding. That is true of grant funding as well. I do not think that anybody argues that three- or five-year contracts would be much more desirable than an annual contract. It difficultly always comes back to the problem of Scottish Government funding, which is on an annual basis. It is difficult for the public sector to commit beyond that annual funding. It is a common and acknowledged issue. You talked about the physical system, the actual accessibility of the physical system, being quite complex. Is this across the board, or are there better examples that could perhaps be held up? I think that I might defer to Pauline on that one. Are you talking about the PCS system, or just the whole process around procurement? I am talking about the whole process in general. Are there other good examples that could be held up better than others, or is it a general issue because of the fundamental procurement system? I do not think that the PCS system is the problem. If you look across the process of procurement from the commissioning end right through to whether it goes to procurement or not, it is a challenge at times. Examples of good practice that I know of or have been involved in are going to the market early before you go to the tender process. You talked to people about the needs within that community, the providers navigating towards that engagement. There is an understanding of one another's perspectives and constraints. That is a much healthier dynamic where you feel like partners in the process and not just providers of something. I think that good practice in Scotland is where that happens. Even if it goes beyond that dialogue to procurement, everybody understands what they are buying, why they are buying it in such a way, and then it is a competitive process. That is a fact of procurement—a competitive process. However, the groundwork has been much more fruitful in driving the right providers and the right conversations. For me, the most important point of that is the understanding of perspectives between the public body, the commissioners, the procurement and the providers and their staff. I think that that is much healthier to be seen as partners in designing and delivery of public services and not simply buyers and suppliers. Colin, can I pick up on something else that David talked about, which is lack of consistency? How widespread is that? Is it a sector? One sector does it one way, another sector does it another way, or is it individual bodies that do the procurement process? How is that coming? It is generally public body level. It is not a particular sector in any way. In some senses, we want to give local authorities, for example, the flexibility to interpret the rules in the way that is good for Glasgow, for example. I work in Glasgow, so I would want that flexibility to be in place. Employability money comes from Scottish Government to local authorities or to local employability partnerships. There is a point in time where you have to look at the local circumstances and have enough flexibility about how you might go to the market to spend the employability money—in other cases, the whole family will be in money. They have all been administered in very different ways. Sometimes that is really frustrating, but we have to allow that flexibility to happen. There is no right or wrong as well. David and you mentioned length of contracts. We would want to see eight to ten-year contracts that give continuity, embeds fair work in the providers and their staff, and gives continuity of care to the people who are supporting them. However, if it is a ten-year contract and there are only three large providers delivering that, you are locking everybody else out of the market. There is a be careful what you wish for argument sometimes, and the dialogue therefor is really important. Duncan, can I maybe bring you in on this particularly along the lines of this question of consistency and the complexity of the procurement system? The barriers that David mentioned can certainly relate to those, because they were in all surveys. We have heard that from social enterprises and charities directly ourselves. Actually, there are some really good case studies of where procurement is working well. I think we should probably promote that a lot more as well. I think it is something we can certainly come up with if we dig down into our research a bit more and really come up with some of the kind of things, situations where it is working well and why it is working well. I think that is really important. We can do that. That inconsistency point, absolutely. It is about interpretation of the law. It is about interpretation of the Procurement Reform Act. It is like that will vary depending on the officer, depending on the local authority, the public body. There is that question of interpretation with any legislation, but certainly with the act as well. How do we change that? I guess that is one of the key questions. A lot of it again is about culture change. It is about clearer guidance, clearer legislation, I guess, being more directive perhaps, that kind of thing. I think there is certainly that inconsistency there. I think just as a general point, I think we do need to look at these things from the perspective of the organisations as well really, as policy makers, as commissioners, to really understand the challenges that smaller organisations face. They are running their businesses. For them to take part in procurement is potentially a really big deal for them. It is a next level in terms of what they are already doing. There is a real barrier there, just a psychological barrier sometimes, but a capacity barrier as well, just to really take part in those processes for a small organisation struggling to survive often. Just to be clear on the issue of multi-year funding, regardless of who gets the contract, whether it is a private sector or a social enterprise or a private enterprise, the lens of the contract is the same, regardless of who bids for it. It is the issue around multi-year, typical of a one-year procurement contract, given the amount of work involved in that. It is a different issue from local government, from voluntary sector funding, because when we had FSB and other organisations in front of us, they tend not to raise the issue of multi-year funding. I think that multi-year funding and procurement is different from the funding for the sector. We want to see that in both cases. For example, if fair work is richly seen now in procurement contracts—and I think that we would all find that laudable—if you have a staff who are working on contracts and others who are working on different sources of funding for different projects, it is really challenging to embed fair work across all staff in that organisation. Pieces of money are coming with a contribution to make sure that you can pay the real living wage and all the other components of fair work and other aspects of funding do not reflect that as keenly. That is a challenge, but we would always argue that, for me, fair funding equals fair work. If that income comes through a procurement opportunity or a grant funding opportunity, we would warmly welcome it. We have far too long hobbled from one year to the next because of the nature of which funding arrives at the local authority level or the health board level. That has been very difficult for third sector organisations, because you cannot plan properly. Do you take the risk? Do you think about your legal duties? Do you employ your employees? How fast do you implement that? It is really challenging. That is in a grant funding context or any income context where that is procurement, rather wise. I follow up on that point on fair work. To what extent has the bill and the changes to procurement process helped to embed fair work? You have talked about the main barrier being the fact that it is not multi-year funding, so you cannot do that. To what extent has the bill embedded that fair work, both with the awarding authorities and with organisations that have been for it at a take-on board issue of multi-year funding? What else can we do in the process to expand that fair work? Fair work first and seeing it embedded in procurement contracts and how it translates through to grant arrangements now is really good. We wholeheartedly support that. The issue for me is that it is working, but we are going from one year. It is the time frame, to be honest, so you are making a commitment and then funding does not come through or you are giving short-term contracts and you do not want to do that because we want to embrace all the aspects of fair work, not just the real living wage but the employee voice, valuing your staff, career progression, all the aspects of fair work are absolutely laudable. Everybody would support that. It is the implementation of it, which is challenging if you are going from one year to another year. You are nodding a lot there, David. Is there anything else that we can change in that process to better embed fair work? Just to echo some of what Pauline said first, we are supportive of sort of conditionality for good things, including fair work, obviously, but in terms of the difficulties that voluntary organisations are presented with in making that sort of work, it is things like fair funding. If you are going to have fair work, payment of the real living wage that needs to be built into the contract, it is not always. I have touched on that already. Some organisations just find it too difficult to make the current funding environment work. Yes, we are very supportive of the fair work agenda conditionality within contracts, but they need to be resourced to be able to deliver on those things. That takes us into the space of Molley annual funding as well, because if you are constantly re-tendering for a process, you are taking up capacity, you are stuck in a sort of doom loop, and it makes these things very difficult. That is very helpful. Duncan, I have a great question around your submission. Social Enterprise Scotland suggests that there is a risk averse culture in some procurement departments, possibly a preconceived notion of what a social enterprise is, which obviously limits the desire to ward contracts to social enterprises. Can you expand on that particular point? Any evidence that you have to show the scale of what that problem is? I would start with the positives, really, just to say that there are various programmes to bring together suppliers with commissioners as well. Organisations like supplier development programme do this kind of thing, so bringing people together and meeting the buyer type thing. I think a lot of activity to break down those barriers is happening, actually. It just needs to happen on a bigger scale, I would suggest. I cannot point to evidence to say what that current situation is, but there is that kind of misunderstanding at risk aversion among commissioners that a social enterprise or a charity is not seen as professional, as maybe a business is, or there are always misunderstandings about what a social enterprise is. I am being anecdotal here obviously, but I think there is that kind of perception there among some commissioners. I think, again, it is not necessarily the procurement offices themselves. It is the barriers or legal and audit, for example. That is the barriers they are facing. So often there is that understanding, actually, but they just cannot take forward that process, I think. Just that point about fair work as well. That increasing conditionality of contracts in fair work, I think, is really welcome. Obviously, payment of the real living wage, I think it is 85% of social enterprises pay the real living wage already, so that we are very supportive of the real living wage, and that increase in conditionality. Obviously, we need to be aware of, as has been mentioned, the costs on particularly small organisations of meeting that criteria. I think that is a really important point to make. Funding and contract values need to increase to reflect those changes in terms of payment of the real living wage or employee voice or whatever it might be. I think that certainly we are very strongly supportive of the fair work agenda and conditionality in contracts. You have all talked about the fact that there are many organisations that are not even involved in public procurement, because of those particular barriers. Is fair work a barrier at the moment to some of those organisations? In terms of getting involved in that, are they put off by the requirements, or is that something? Obviously, we want to embed fair work across the board, so we have to bring that up. I think that social enterprises and charities broadly speaking are very supportive of the fair work agenda in general, so they are driving it. They are driving the fair work agenda, so in terms of them meeting that kind of criteria, it may be easier than it is for the private sector organisations. Thank you very much, convener, and good morning to the panel. Thank you for what you've contributed so far. Just exploring conditionality a little bit further, we spoke right at the beginning in response to some of the care questions around the disability employment gap and what more we can do in the procurement space for that. I'm wondering whether any of you have any thoughts and comments of thinking about conditionality, thinking about how we also had that earlier conversation between outcome and that balance between price and social good and impact. How can we deal with other equalities issues in making procurement work for people? I suppose that the tie-in is back to community wealth building, but also for more general community resilience and that kind of thing. I don't know, Pauline, if you want to kick off. Gender is one element of that, but not the only one. I wonder if you wanted to... No, thank you for your question. I'm very passionate about this because it's a long time worked with the supported businesses and social enterprises that support people with disabilities or other barriers to the labour market into work. The supported business in a procurement context has a legislative two-part test. The rest of us don't. The rest of the sector doesn't, so we're missing a trick, I think. In particular because the legislation changed to 50 per cent disabled people, you qualify to 30 per cent, so that market is potentially a lot bigger than we think it is. There's an opportunity there, given that we already have a supported business framework. I think that that's been hugely beneficial, but the lots have been too narrow in my view and therefore the number of providers on that framework has been limited. I think that there's an opportunity and I would keenly work with my colleague there to do a bit of further research around what does the supported business market look like now that legislation has changed. I'll be reaching the right numbers of people and organisations that we could within the reserve framework. The other opportunity is that public bodies could use our reserved contract without going through the collaborative framework. They could just do it because that's underutilised, so they're not thinking about disability employment gap as much as they could be through the reserved contract regime. More than that, the sustainable procurement duty has a direct reference to addressing inequalities in the area that you operate in. I think that's getting a bit lost, so there's something for me about picking up on that when procurement people are thinking about social impact or environmental clauses within their contract. Where is the inequality addressing inequalities one? There's something further that we could do on that. In terms of the mechanism for that, would you see in the sustainable procurement duty in the balancing in the proportions given to certain criteria, that being the most effective way of enhancing the value given to sustainable procurement? Absolutely, and it depends on the purpose. What are you buying? What's the purpose of this activity? Work back the way to think about how could I get the best of addressing inequalities in whatever way is relevant to the contract and your local area. Proportionality is important. We can't do everything at the same time with the same impact, so proportionality for me is important. David, do you want to comment on this? I don't think I've got much to add to what Pauline already said. Obviously, as I've said, we support conditionality as long as voluntary organisations are supported and resourced to make good on that. In terms of awarding contracts to supported businesses that have a certain proportion of disabled people working in them, I think I would say anything further. I would defer to my colleagues and the organisations that represent the disabled community, but sorry. I suppose that I'm thinking not only looking at disability disabled employment gaps, because there are other protected characteristics, there are other equalities issues. Are there other elements that we should be thinking about or other mechanisms that we could be using procurement to enhance gender equality in the workplace, drawing people who wouldn't traditionally work in a sector into that environment? Are there ways that we should be looking at procurement to do that? I think that Pauline has already covered that in terms of sustainable procurement duty and the provisions that already exist within the action. Just one thing before I come to you, Duncan. When you talk about supporting conditionality as long as grant funders recognise that they need to provide resources for that, what is your assessment of grant and other funders in their understanding of full-cost recovery? Do they understand the extent of what that means for different types of charities, different types of organisations that SCVO represents? I think that the experience that we mix, depending on who they are working with, but I have feedback that some organisations are the only way they can make a certain contract work, at a loss, and that means dipping into their reserves or their own fundraising, which obviously isn't fair on them. Those examples do exist. Arguably, they shouldn't exist if we're doing procurement right, should they? No. So there's something in there for us to close. What would you see would be the mechanism of closing that gap? It's the kind of things that I've talked about already, so fair funding is a huge one, just making sure that organisations have proper resource to be able to deliver those things. Also, alternative fundings are another one. I guess that you can always add to conditionality in contracts to drive equalities. I think that's really important to do that. Again, it's just coming back to that point about making sure that organisations are able to afford to do that, and they're given that extra resource to be able to implement that, but I certainly think that driving equalities through conditionality contracts is quite important. Obviously, the more social enterprises and charities you award contracts to, the more you're going to drive that quality in gender often, depending on which groups they're working with often. They're working with excluded groups in society, et cetera, so there's a lot of, the more you can employ the better in that sense. But I think, at that point, it probably made it all about reserve contracts as well. I think that's certainly not being used enough. There are other avenues here, not just procurement, these traditional procurement processes, so there are these kind of reserve contracts as quick quotes. There was some feedback in our survey as well that some authorities are going through a procurement process when they can be going through a grant process as well, which is a little bit worrying, I think, for some people. Procurement is not the only show in town or whatever kind of thing, so there are alternatives to procurement process as well to drive those equalities or other issues. Do you have an assessment of why procurement is being used when perhaps grant funding or other mechanisms through service level agreements or the like? Yeah, I'm not sure. It was just a couple of bits of feedback from our survey, actually, so I'm not quite sure beyond that, really. So there's maybe some digging for us to do. Yeah, I think so, yeah. It might be, and your points about the lack of use of the reserved contracts, is it just because there hasn't been the talk about it, it's not seen as something we see all, you know, procurement. Procurement has all of the stuff built into it and around it, so there's some work. We'd have to do their own due diligence, so the two-part test for a supported business, the local authority, for example, would have to do their own due diligence on making sure they're bona fide supported businesses, if you see what I mean, and I think the market's broader than that. I think just to finish, I think there's really inventive ways that we could address inequalities that chime with the sustainable procurement duty, and that might be really innovative community benefit clauses or under internships, targeted recruitment and training that would target women in particular sectors that they're not represented enough in, so there's really inventive ways of doing it, whether procurement people have the time to dedicate to that, but that's where you get the richness coming through in a procurement context, I think. That's really helpful, thank you. Thank you. Brian Whittle told you, but I'll finish with you. Thank you. I was just smiling back, it was a thought around, and some of the reporting you get from the procurement process, is that you have those organisations who could quite well fulfil part of the contract, which means that, to partake in that, they would either have to seek partners, which is not the easiest thing in the world if they're a small organisation, or they'd have to make a leap and take on more of the financial risk and expand. Is there a role here for the contracting authorities to split the contract in those particular circumstances there? Of course, that's more work on the procurement, and what with the answer that we gave earlier on, it's much more work for the procurement process, but is that a way to bring more community wellbeing into contracts? There's a dilemma there, I think. Thank you for your question. I encourage lotting. I've had a good long time for lotting, and now we're seeing lotting, so sometimes that works really well, and sometimes it works against, because you get providers who will compete to go through the same lots, and we'll go through the bigger, the larger ones will have the capacity to go through all the lots, for example. My favourite approach would be that the commissioner thinks really carefully at the front end. What are they buying? Does this merit a different approach to the procurement whereby they could seek collaborative bids? They're stating quite explicitly that we would like to see collaborative bids on this, and that works much easier in a grant context, because you have the flexibility to shape it, but it doesn't necessarily work against a good commission procurement process, where you want to get the best of all the providers in that market and you get people like us to do, I mean, I've done quite a lot on employability, where you're getting the sector together early enough to prepare for partnerships and collaborative bids, and I think that the outcome is much better, much richer. So rather than just lotting, encourage a collaborative approach, and that might be through an alliance arrangement or a public social partnership. Again, we've got great examples in Scotland of not going to procurement right away but doing a PSP or an alliance and then learning from that and getting the best of the outcomes and then going to procurement. So we need to be doing more of that, I think, and that would help to shape improvements in procurement in the future. Yeah, the only thing to add to what Pauline's been saying there is in the research that we did with Social Enterprise Scotland, one of the big takeaways was that organisations in response to our survey said that consortia bids are welcomed and supported within the culture and the practice, so it's just to add to that and draw the kind of attention to that. I agree with everybody, I think, a break of consensus there, but yeah, I mean, there's a lot of work been done, programmes and, for example, in terms of building that collaborative effort for Social Enterprise and Charities has been work around breaking down contracts. I think we do need that, both those different strands certainly. Yeah, I think it's difficult for commissioners actually to break down contracts when it's easier for them to just award one contract or just to kind of go down the traditional route, I think it is easier. But again, it's coming back to that point around the outcomes, what your economic and social outcomes you want to achieve, and then the process comes after that rather than constantly thinking of, like, should we break down this contract? It's like, well, what are your outcomes in the first place? That's a storing point. Yes, thank you. Can I just be asked, in a few weeks we have Scotland Excel coming in, and I don't know if I'm going to come to Duncan first if you want to comment on that model, whether it is helpful for social enterprises, how difficult or otherwise it is to be part of Scotland Excel and what it means if you're not part of it? I don't know enough about it to comment, because that's one of the challenges. When we spoke to Dovetail, that was one of the issues that they raised with us. I don't know if Pauline or David want to comment on the role of Scotland Excel. I have to say again, the dialogue that we have at the procurement reform supply group involves twice a year, we meet the centres of procurement expertise, so Scotland Excel are one of them, and we've got a really good relationship with them, we don't always agree with them, I have to say, but they are forward-thinking. I see their role. All the centres of expertise, APOC, Scotland Excel and national procurement for health are really quite important stakeholders in driving improvements. They have their own constituency, they are listening to suppliers issues, and they are the conduit to get better results in processing practice in the health sector, in the social care sector, in the FEAT and in local government. They've been very great to work with, they listen to us, they might not always like what we say, but there's a good relationship there and I think that we all have to play our part in driving forward improvements. It's not laying blame at anybody's door, we all want the same thing, and I think I said at the beginning of this, let's focus on getting the best outcomes for the people of Scotland, and right now in the financial environment we do need to collaborate across sectors and within sectors to get the best that we can out of procurement spending, that's a big spend, £14.5 billion. I have a good relationship with the centres of expertise, I think that we could be doing more with them, because we raise the issues and they take them forward and then we don't really always know what happened, so we could be doing better, and that's incumbent upon us as well as then. Okay, thank you. David, do you have any, from STVO's perspective, comments on the Excel providers? No, it's deferred. Pauline, on that, whose diary dealings with them now. Okay, that's great, and thank you very much for the evidence this morning. Thank you for the witnesses. We'll now briefly suspend as of a change-over of panel. Thank you. I now welcome our second panel of witnesses, Lindsay Millan, Head of Policy and Development, Close the Gap, and Martin Rhodes, Chief Executive of the Scottish Fair Trade Forum. Dave Mokson, from the Scottish Trade Union's Congress, is unable to attend this morning and has sent apologies. As always, if members of witnesses can keep their questions and answers as concise as possible, we'll get through the business this morning. Can I maybe just come to an initial question? We are undertaking a post-legislative inquiry into the 2014 act, so we're interested in how the panellists feel the 2014 act has been of benefit, what have been the key changes that have happened, and what are some of the biggest challenges that still remain? Martin, would you like to go first? The microphones are operated for you. In terms of the key success, from our point of view with regard to the legislation, is the requirement in it for public bodies to set out in their procurement policy what their policy is with regard to fairly traded, ethically traded goods. That's been useful in that public bodies now do that, and we can clearly see what the policy is. The biggest challenge is how that is monitored, measured and recorded. In terms of that, I think one of the biggest challenges for public bodies is the lack of any definition in the legislation of what's meant by fairly traded. Therefore, they use a range of different methods in terms of different definitions, and also different methods about how they then record that in the system. When we have carried out research, and we carried out research for three-year periods from 2019 to 2022, and we're currently collecting material from 2022 to 2023, what we got back was data that isn't really comparable in terms of if one organisation, public bodies, is using one definition, one is using another, one is recording the data in a different way to the other. It's very difficult to compile, for instance, one local authority to another, or even across time because they're not necessarily using the same methods of recording each year, so I think that's the biggest challenge is around how we actually measure success against the policies which they now have, which is obviously, as I said, the biggest success of the legislation from our point of view. I just think that the introduction of the policies that they now have has been enough of a driver. You know, we're notwithstanding the difficulties that are in measuring and the data, but do you think the expectation or that they have to produce a policy has helped drive the increase in future problems? I think it has helped certainly in terms of allowing organisations like ourselves to say, you know, you've said this in your policy, what are you doing? So I think it makes them aware of their obligations. In that sense, it is a driver. I would go back though in terms of transparency and accountability without data which is useful. It's very difficult in terms of you don't have that transparency and you don't have the accountability there, but it's certainly helpful to have the policy in place as a lever, but I think more is required. Thank you. I'll come to Lindsay. So again, what have been the key changes since the 2014 act? What's been positive about it and where do you think bigger challenges are? I think certainly national procurement policy and guidance is more progressive than it used to be before, certainly the sustainable procurement duty and requirements to take action around environmental and social considerations, but I think one of the biggest challenges is that kind of translation into practice and also the consideration of different types and sources of inequality because, you know, asking organisations to consider inequality more broadly, social inequality is not the same thing as asking them to consider and take action on, for example, gender inequality. And one thing that we are particularly concerned about is a real absence of a clear throughline in the different aspects of procurement policy. The public sector equality duty, which has been in place since 2012, has a specific duty on integrating equality considerations into procurement practice on public bodies and there's no mention of this in the most recent procurement strategy and the statutory guidance on the act only contains one line, which mentions that the procurement duty in pieces is a thing, but it doesn't contain any detail on that and considering that there is a specific duty on public bodies to use procurement to advance equality and tackle discrimination as far as possible, we would expect that that would be reflected in broader procurement policy because we know that public bodies in general do struggle with action on inequality and require really specific and clear direction, but they tend to see procurement and equality as two different things, so they might be doing work on procurement and then work in equality over here, which is really inefficient and they could be bringing these things together, so I think that's one of the biggest challenges for us. Do you have any examples of a local authority that has successfully, maybe brought it together, if we did hear about the community welfare building pilots and the committee when we looked at this last time? In terms of examples of integrating equality into procurement, we did up until, I think, our last assessment was in 2021, do assessments of how public bodies are meeting the public centre of equality duty, which included looking specifically at their action around procurement and unfortunately we were only able to find evidence of one public body that had mentioned equality in their procurement strategy and had said that they were going to consider equality, but there was no specifics about how they did it, so it makes it very difficult to I guess ensure that that equality is mainstreamed into their practice even when they're reporting on their work under the duty, if they're not mentioning it it kind of indicates that it's not happening because when public bodies report on their work around equality they tend to be quite clear about the things that they're doing and their successes because they want to provide evidence of that, so if they're not saying they're doing it, the assumption is more likely than not that they're not doing it. There is research on equality and procurement by an academic who's an expert on equality and procurement, Katrina Sartor, and she did find some examples, a small number of examples on equality action and procurement, I can't reference any of them off hand right now but I can certainly provide that information to the committee if that would be helpful, but one of the things that she identified was that in order to integrate equality considerations into procurement the contracting authority has to have a clear understanding of inequality for each of the protected characteristics and also how that integrates into socioeconomic inequality and because they need to be able to look at what it is that they're contracting out and say well what are the specific issues that might be different for women and men relating to this that might be different for racially minoritised people for example and then be able to take steps to for example incorporate gender equality into the subject of the contract or use the contract to foster equality within the workforce of a specific contract, so something we know about or like from our work on the public sector equality duty is there's a real absence of that level of gender competence and equalities competence more broadly to enable public bodies to do that and then when you get further down the line when you get those people who have won the contracts if it's not clearly written into the contract then it's unlikely that they're going to voluntarily start doing work on equality around that you know there needs to be this through line and so that I guess is a much kind of a broader reflection not only of procurement work but also equalities work because the public sector equality duty has been in place since 2012 and prior to that it's predecessor duty the gender equality duty was in place since 2007 there has been a duty to consider equality and procurement since then and actually what we've seen is a decline in performance rather than what you would expect as people are doing it longer they get better at it. Okay thank you Evelyn Tweed to be followed by Mordell Fraser. Thanks, convener. Good morning panel. Thank you for being here. My questions are around price. Is price still a key determining factor in procurement? To Lindsay Frost. Our work around social care would indicate that price is still the top or most concern really in procurement. Procurement is a huge issue in how social care services are procured and designed and as we know there's a massive crisis in social care just now and a big driver of that crisis is the crisis within the workforce downward forces on the already extremely low pay of social care workers and you know with all of the the work that's been done around the development of the national care service the independent review of adult social care was very very clear that price was you know resulting in a race to the bottom in procurement and social care and that that was a big driver of the issues in the sector and so yes I would say is my answer to that question and using that specific example. You had mentioned the excuse me the sustainable procurement duty what do you think about that does that need strengthened? I would say it needs strengthened in that the kind of things that feed into the things that flow from sustainable procurement are things that really closely interconnect with inequalities whether that's for women or disabled people or racially minoritised people or whoever else is covered within the quality legislation and so what we see is a very siloed approach to action on things that are you know a bit to do with social progress and that really places a burden on public bodies who don't necessarily have the knowledge and understanding to understand how these things integrate and so end up doing a piece of work on this aspect of a duty and a piece of work on that and then something else and then you know we've got the human rights bill coming around the corner which will also include due regard duties on public bodies around human rights whether it will include something on procurement or not I don't know but I think one way in which the sustainable procurement duty could be improved is to make really clear links in policy between all of these different ways in which procurement can produce community benefits and directing contracting authorities to you know really think about all of the different aspects of it together with regard to the question on price yes obviously in terms of price is key to any purchase of any sort whether it's an individual purchase or whether it's a public body purchasing and also along with price there are facts around suitability the quality of the product the reliability of supply and so on obviously around price if you have a system such as fair trade which is ensuring that there is fairness throughout the supply chain and what people are being paid at various points for their services or for their products that presents a challenge if you're competing against those who might not be seeking to reach those standards however with regard to most of the major commodities that are fair trade that are available for public procurement in a sense there is an economy of scale in terms of if you look at in terms of around catering around tea and coffee and sugar and so on they are produced at such scale within the fair trade system that they can be competitive on price to the non fair trade items so yes price is obviously a key consideration but it's not the only one that's taken into account clearly by people within the procurement system in that they look at other things as well quite clearly around as I say suitability of the product and the quality and the availability and so on thank you Murdoff Beasley is befoiled by Gordon MacDonald I wanted to ask a question around the use of procurement to support local economies and it's an issue that comes up time and time again when we talk about procurement a feeling that you know enough is done within the system to ensure the money is spent locally particularly when it's coming to things like NHS boards and local councils so I was interested just to get your own perspectives on this and whether you think the current legislative framework does enough to ensure we're directing funds to be spent locally and if there are barriers to that is that an issue of legislation or is that simply an issue of practice? Martin I see you nodding so I'll go to you for it. Yeah in terms of I think quite often when people look at fair trade products they see them as being international and not local and of course there is a large part of that which is true we don't grow tea, coffee, bananas and so on locally however there is in terms of an impact on the on a local economies and you have fair trade businesses which are based here in Scotland that employ people here and so on so there is a local elements in terms of within fair trade because it's about a whole supply chain right from wherever the initial product first is grown and then to where it's then locally supplied I think there is perhaps a bigger issue in terms of local is the size of the business is maybe more of an issue than the actual location of it in that it can be difficult for SMEs to access procurement because of the size of lots and so on the various things that have been discussed and are doubted by others and I think that's where in terms of fair trade businesses that's the challenge they one of the big challenges they have is in terms of how do they get within those bigger procurement tender processes. Okay thank you. Lindsay have any comments? I think in terms of considerations around keeping money in local communities I don't have any specific information from close the gas perspective on like how to do that but what we do know is that retaining money in local communities has huge potential for tackling inequalities and when you're thinking about women's access to the labour market being able to work closer to home is much easier if you've got childcare responsibilities and so integrating inequalities consideration into that work and I think understanding that you know work for example around community wealth building or retaining money in local communities is not necessarily going to result in equal benefits for everyone in those communities is a really important consideration for us. Okay all right thank you both. Okay I can just ask Martin in terms of you know increasing the amount of fair trade products that are in procurement it's part of it it's not just about maybe the smaller fair trade distributors but about them becoming part of a bigger provider and for local authorities or NHS to be asking you know to put in condition is it appropriate for them to put conditions on so it might be it's not today in businesses but sedex those one of the biggest companies that supply is part of the success in this making those that size similar size companies provide more fair trade products yes I mean many of the bigger companies particularly on the catering side will probably have fair trade options available and they have those options available because public bodies have asked for them so one of the key things is actually about I mean speaking to many procurement officers the key thing they say is people need to ask for these things so we know that they want them yeah so there is a job to be done of getting public bodies to say that they want to have fair trade options available to them and that will then make a decision based on you know price and quality and suitability reliability and all of that and but in terms of to ask for that option so that at least it's there when they come to look at those different aspects of the decision and so I think one of the key challenges for us and for fair trade businesses is ensuring that they're in a position to supply those others who may be in a position to actually bid for contracts and that I mean there are plenty of fair trade suppliers who are capable of doing that but the key thing is you need to show that there's demand in the system so that's why we need public bodies to actually say that they want to have a look at those options and have them available through these bigger companies that may well be looking to supply having said that in terms of I'm talking there about catering there are other fair trade products available as well I would take the view that actually around textiles there is a huge potential there for a market around fair trade within that that hasn't been fully explored there's a whole range of ways in which textiles are used within the public sector whether that be in terms of uniforms whether it be in terms of if looking in terms of hospitals in terms of all sorts of different equipments and so on that might be used there so I think there are other areas other than catering where perhaps the market is not as developed as it could be but whether is huge potential but it does need public bodies to be asking for those options to be made available to them so they can then at least look at them and assess them as part of the process. Thank you. Gordon MacDonald we're followed by Brian Whittle. Thank you very much convener and good morning panel. I wanted to ask you about the public contract Scotland website. What's your members experience of using it? How easy is it? How transparent is it and is there any improvements that are required? On that one in terms of that one first I couldn't tell you in terms of I've not had those conversations and I could certainly have conversations with members and report back to committee in terms of we could certainly ask them in terms of however I would say in terms of picking up what the convener said a lot of our businesses wouldn't be directly putting in for the contract they'd be supplying to other peoples I think that's probably why I haven't had those conversations but I can check and come back to the committee on that. Thank you very much. In terms of the so we would work more with kind of contracting authorities around equality and procurement and unfortunately because of the few and far between examples of procurement happening in public bodies that integrates equality I don't have any examples of conversations that I've had with people on that either. That's okay thank you. Brian Whittle to be followed by Kevin Stewart. Thank you. Good morning. I'm really interested to hear you discussing fair trade, discussing equality and the reality is fair trade costs money to produce because we're talking about local procurement we hold our food producers to such a high standard we have to accept that that's a cost associated with that so I think that the sense I'm getting is that the legislation that we have at the moment actually is reasonable but it's the implementation of that legislation where we could improve it and I'm just wondering you know for example I'm a big advocate of local food procurement for example and the positive impact that can have across much of society in terms of community well-being should we be starting the procurement process the other way around and looking for what the outcomes were looking for how we commissioned that and then put procurement into practice you know because at the moment it seems to me that pressures on budget are impacting the desire for you know this the fair trade for equality but I'm quite sure everybody wants but the bottom line is everybody's looking at the bottom line from our perspective I would say yes looking at it from the other way around would be really effective I think there's a lot of consideration around activities and outputs rather than outcomes in procurement and that's you know just because of the way procurement processes are designed in terms of value for money there is extensive evidence that if you're not considering equality in procurement in the design of services and how contracts work that you are unlikely to be getting best value for public money because there's so much of what is procured that might have very different impacts for women and men for example and if you're not designing a service to meet the needs of the people that it is intended to meet effectively then ultimately you're talking about a waste of public money in many ways because if you design it better it's better targeted and so it might be more cost effective and that's really the intention of the equality mainstreaming duty in the public sector equality duty that public body should be considering equality across in all of their functions and they should be integrating it into their policy development and so for us and what the evidence tells us is that equality considerations are directly linked to value for money so if those things you know what are the outcomes that we want who is benefiting who is this service meant for if all of those things come first then I think you're you're likely to see a more publicly beneficial procurement process overall. I think coming back to your question about your question about cost as I've said in terms of previously to previous question around yeah price is clearly essentially important to people making purchase and choices but I think in terms of if you look at the main fair trade products currently within the public procurement system they are comparable on price you also need to look at quality and that's taken part of those discussions well around procurement because if you have a quality product and particularly when I talk for instance about textiles if you have a quality product it can last a lot longer therefore what may look like a short term cost actually I mean the longer term might produce a saving because the product lasts longer than another product which was cheaper to buy in the first instance so I think I would want to look at cost in a longer run out in terms of and make those and also look at in terms of as I say products where there's already a clear fair trade market they're competitive on price and price isn't I mean that's why actually if you look at if you go into a lot of public bodies and you get a cup of coffee you will see that it is fair trade certified coffee or sugar and so on that's because actually it's perfectly competitive on price because it's a product which is at such a scale an economy a scale that it can compete as such and it's also in terms of because it's met the standards with regard to quality as well with regard to what the purchase wants with regard to your suggestion I think in terms of that the implementation is the problem I think the point I'm making is not so much implementation it's about how we actually record what's being done is the issue in terms of it's very difficult to say if there are problems in implementation because we can't actually fully work out what has been implemented because of the lack of definitions the lack of monitoring systems for instance there may well be quite a lot of underreporting when we've contacted all these public bodies and asked them you know what fair trade products have you bought in the last year on this particular financial year I think there will be quite significant underreporting because it depends how they've recorded that in their system if they've recorded it as a fair trade coffee or fair trade tea or whatever it is but then it will show up on their procurement when they go through and how much have we spent on fair trade if they've recorded it as just coffee that happens to be fair trade and haven't put that in or they've just recorded under the brand name of that coffee then it won't show up when they start this when they do a search for us with regard to what's fair trade that we've bought so I think there's a whole I think where the problems lie I mean it's implementation the sense but it's more to do with not so much the implementation of buying it it's actually how you record what you buy how you then monitor it and how then you can actually somebody in terms of from outside can have a look at that and say you know here's the figures it's transparent and I can compare what one local authority is doing to another so I think that's what I would see the main weaknesses in that sort of way in which it's monitored and recorded and defined if we could find a system whereby people were doing it and organization were doing it in the same way then we can have conversations with them like with one organization saying why if others can manage to do this why can't you manage to do it or you know if you managed to do this last year why can't you do it this year now there may be reasons for that that's fine but if you actually have that ability to compare then you have that transparency and you have that accountability just just a quick follow-up on that just on your point there around you know purchasing you know goods that in the longer term will save you money being devil's advocate I'm not sure that councils always have that luxury to be able to do that because they don't have that front end ability to purchase the goods that would give a better service and have longevity two things one they do have front end money and two they'll be questioned on it so how do we get around that I mean I totally agree in terms of why do public authorities not just local authorities but public authorities make those decisions in that way it's because of the way in which their budget is set in terms of they have to make those decisions in terms of to make sure that they're spending within the limits of their budget in that particular financial year or of whatever period they're looking at so it's not necessarily a criticism of those public bodies it's more of the system in which we have that emphasis in terms of annual budgets or even three yearly budgets in terms of that ability to actually look ahead and if you don't have the money that year to buy it and you will go for the cheaper option because you need to buy whatever that is so I think in terms of I'm not going to in terms of open open to a discussion about how public and in terms of why do public bodies or local authorities are funded but I think there is an issue around that whole budget process for public bodies that creates some of these problems not just in terms of you know my particular interest here today and around fair trade but more generally around those budgeting types of decisions we don't work specifically around around that issue but I would say in terms of your your question regarding the suitability of the legislation I think it is definitely translating policy into practice challenge but I think there is room for the legislation to be clearer on how the procurement that the procurement treaty within the public sector equality treaty relates to say the sustainable procurement treaty or a public body strategy and for example the requirement for those public bodies with significant expenditure to publish a procurement strategy could require them to state within that strategy how they will use the public sector equality treaty on procurement to shape the work they do around procurement and could include a statement of their kind of general policy around equality so I think there are there are small ways in which the legislation could be changed but yeah I would say that definitely the bigger piece of the work is translating the ambition and policy into practice okay thank you okay thank you can I just ask when we're talking about the legislation so the current contract value of it's up to 50 000 pounds we can use the quick quote system I don't know Lindsay if you have any views on that we've heard from the previous panels that that hasn't changed its ratio that could be increased and if you haven't the quick quote system it'll take out some of the bureaucracy and maybe some of the barriers that smaller businesses which might be more women led businesses are experiencing and get into contracts we haven't done any work looking specifically at the impact of that that financial threshold but certainly anything that facilitates those smaller businesses to participate in procurement is a good thing especially from an equality perspective because we know employers generally don't do enough on equality for example those large employers in the private and third sector who are required to publish their gender pay gap under the UK level legislation our assessment looked at half of Scottish employers that fall under that purview and find that only less than a third of them are actually taking action to tackle their pay gap and then when you look at the support systems that smaller businesses have within their organisations to facilitate work on equality it's even harder for them to do things so even when we see these large employers aren't doing enough we find all of the smaller employers who have great intentions but they don't know how to think about equality because they don't have an HR department for example or they don't have an equalities expert so there is that additional layer of bureaucracy around procurement that will kind of combine with the struggles they face around you know integrating equality into their own practice as an employer or even you know of their designing services that might have a gendered impact the other threshold that exists is the four million threshold so it's only if a contract with a value is equal to or in excess of four million that them requires authorities to consider including community benefit requirements i don't know if martin if you haven't any views on that we did hear previous at the committee about the community wealth building pilots i think it's one in clatman and there's five regional authorities whether you think that threshold is still appropriate and whether it's effective and drive and can a community benefit policies we don't have a view on that to be honest in terms of that particular element of it but when you talk about in terms of community wealth building however i think and we have had discussions with those involved in community wealth building about i mean i suppose what we mentioned earlier in terms of in a previous answer previous question was around understanding fair trade in the sense of the whole supply chain including um yes producers um somewhere potentially in the global south to um those involved right the way through that transportation and the production of it and actually people working here in scotland in terms of on the wholesale retailing and the importing side of it um and i think there is a piece of work around community wealth building that looks at how wealth building in one community um can help build wealth in another community um it can be that um virtuous circle um whereby um you can have a situation whereby um i've taken a one example i'm aware of in terms of um you have paisley you have a fair trade importer true origin they're importing um goods fair trade goods from different parts of the um the global south um that therefore has an impact on those communities there in um um malawi um or in terms of eswitini in different places where they import from um but it also has an impact in paisley in terms of there are people there in terms of being employed in that business in paisley in the warehouse in terms of importing and in the marketing of those products um and then in terms of um you have examples again in terms of from paisley where you have um fair trade coffee being imported from um rwanda um then roasted by a local um coffee roaster in paisley and then sold in a fair trade shop in terms of in paisley itself in terms of gatehouse roasters and then supplying rainbow turtler shop there so actually you have within that community in paisley people um in terms of this the whole supply chain in terms of right from the farmers in rwanda to people roasting coffee selling coffee in a shop and so on um just in the example there um so i think that's one example of how you can see a situation of community wealth building isn't inward looking it can be outward looking and it can be that one community's wealth building can support wealth building in another community as well okay thank you and kevin stewart be followed by colbyto it's a pity that george adam isn't here because he would be quite interested in these paisley stories without a doubt um convener we have heard from others including yourself today around about bureaucracies and people saying that sometimes the system is still process driven that the legislation itself is good but when it comes to implementation there's still those process driven situations we've also heard you know that sometimes the tender documents they put in together of the contract the commissioning is good but when the lawyers and the accountants get a hold of all of that it changes what's your experience around about some of those risk averse situations that come into play when others like the lawyers like the accountants get a hold of all of this lindsay please i'm not sure i could offer a specific view on the the kind of that particular aspect of the process but certainly in terms of bureaucracy and being process driven i think you know that that could be said about procurement strategy procurement practice in public bodies and can also be said about public bodies approach to complying with the public sector equality duty we see a lot of you know not thinking about the outcomes not thinking about what does this organization need to have in terms of equalities competence and competence on how that relates to procurement in order to do the whole process correctly and you just kind of end up in this cycle of you know must complete form and it doesn't actually build the capacity the institutional knowledge that the organization might need to do it well so let me give you an example and it may be something that you have come across and there has been at certain points not so much recently but certain points a real adversity to putting in fair work into contracts because lawyers have said to folks you know we can't really enforce this we may be challenged on this obviously there was the European legislation there's ruling refer versus need or sacks in what what you're feeling around about adversity in that area and has that been overcome to the degree that you would like i think there's a lot to be done around embedding fair work requirements and procurement and i think again it's to do with a lack of understanding of what that means in practice and what is possible to be done and i think there's a really narrow sense of what can be done through procurement in terms of advancing equality and again that kind of connects back to a lack of a long term view building capacity in terms of understanding of what what it is that can be done and perhaps there's more requirement for more detailed guidance from government on that and you know i think public bodies need reassured that you know action asking for action on equality as part of a tender is not necessarily precluded i mean there's actually lots of really good examples of how it's been done the research that i referred to earlier has good examples of that happening in scotland so i think that's more of an understanding capacity building exercise probably for those lawyers as well but it's definitely underused and it has huge potential to to create change i mean if you think of social care funding questions aside you know that if you were requiring social care providers to think about inequality in their workforce for example around employment practice and pay levels you could be not only creating a much better service for those people who require care but also tackling one of the widest causes of women's labour market inequality which is low pay and women's concentration and those types of jobs and the knock-on effect of that is massive so this risk averseness around fair work is definitely a concern and fair pay in these regards often ensure that the the absence rates and other things go down taking account of folks caring responsibilities again can ensure that absence rates go down so do you think there's enough of that done in terms of that work done on that to no i think there's there's a really strong business case for taking action on gender equality more businesses are aware of that but the same issue i think exists in businesses as exists at a larger level which is you know we know all of this but how do we put it into practice is it just something that's nice to have when times are good and we can afford the time and resource to devote to thinking about this or is it something that falls off the side of the table when there's financial pressures or there's another policy that's perhaps a little bit higher profile that comes along so i think employers do understand the business benefits but it doesn't always translate into change and i think that's for varying reasons i think it can be a knowledge and capacity issue around gender equality around procurement it can be financial pressures not understanding actually what the business benefits mean in terms of long term investment and the long term return on that so it's not happening enough and it's frustrating because as you said the knock-on effects you know can be huge because there's a massive recruitment and retention challenge across the labour market and i think employers are missing a trick short term being counting rather than necessarily looking at whole life costs basically martin have you got anything to say around about bureaucracies i mean yeah i think in terms of we don't have a set view as an organisation on lawyers and accountants in terms of how you started up in terms of more generally um what i would say is coming back to this question of risk i think it is about not i mean in the public sector where we're talking now but in a private sector as well there is a risk around not having knowledge of your supply chain um and we've seen you know private companies we've seen in terms of third sector organisations we've seen public sector bodies where they have not known their supply chain and have you know found themselves and where their reputation has been damaged and there can be huge damage done to a business or organisation and if you know for instance you haven't done checks on where you're getting your uniforms from and then it's discovered it's been your uniforms have been made in some you know way in terms of using forced labour or child labour whatever it might be in terms of so i think there is about um an argument to be made around seeing risk in different ways that if you don't you know in terms of treat you know if you don't look at your whole supply chain and look at how different people involved in that supply chain from your direct employees to people you're contracting with or subcontracting with um how they're being treated then that there is a real risk there in terms of damage to your business if that means that becomes public so i think i would i would think there's a work to be done by organisations like ourselves and others to actually ensure that people realise that there is a risk element to not doing proper diligence around your supply chain. Okay thank you very much thank you convener and thank you Colin Beattie to be followed by Colin Smith. Martin let me turn to you i'm looking at your submission here and in particular the the report that you produced in connection with the team of information questions and so on that you asked various public bodies and i was interested in some of the results here i mean you said you state here that public bodies have vastly different understandings of fair trade i mean that's a pretty sweeping statement uh how vast are these differences in understanding and how do they come about? I think um because the act doesn't define what it means by fair trade then it has been left to public bodies to when they've been asked the question by us in terms of about what they've bought that's been fair trade to use their definition and create their own definition now i'm not going to create their own definition but they've taken a particular definition from somewhere else um some of those public bodies have used very very tight criteria which is essentially have we bought something that is recorded in the system as having the fair trade mark certification on it so it's a very very tight definition in that sense others if you look at the in terms of the very long appendix to that report um have essentially included in it anything that has had any sort of ethical consideration in the purchasing of um so um that's why i'm saying in terms with the lack without that definition um that's taken by everybody in terms of um then it's very difficult to compare one to the other because you look at it and say this one's only this body's only spent you know a few you know 50 000 pounds on fair trade and this one's spent you know hundreds of thousands of pounds but when you look at it they're including very different things one of them may just have their sort of fair trade certified coffee and the sugar that they use others may be putting in i don't know at terms of um a refresh of their it equipment you use some sort of ethical consideration now i'm not saying that's not something you would want them to do i'm not saying is you're not comparing like with like because they're using different definitions of fairly traded um which i think in terms of if there was one thing i would want from the you know in terms of from this in terms of changing the term of the legislation or how that's taken forward um would be a definition given to public bodies about what they regard as fair trade um what should be regarded as fair trade and in their recording and then in any monitoring um that i think from our point of view would be the most useful thing and i would hope in terms of that it wouldn't need legislation for that and some sort of guidance officially in terms of that would actually just give that definition so when people organizations were responding to the question they were all responding using the same definition so then it's comparable year on year and it's comparable in terms of between organizations um so you know i think that's that's um the problem we've discovered because the idea was when we sat out this report was we'd sort of set a baseline where all these organizations were and we couldn't compare them year on year but we could compare them across it's just not possible to do that which is why i was saying there's not that transparency there or accountability because you're just looking at different things and how do you compare those from the example i gave earlier somebody who's using a very tight definition um of you know fair trade certified coffee that's been recorded as such in our systems um to somebody who's using this has had ethical considerations in the purchasing of all of this which is correct um i would want a definition which is using um a fairly i would suggest a fairly tight definition of fair trade if that's you know i'm wanting a definition of fair trade to be used to measure it it would be um items that were certified as fair trade through the two major international fair trade systems fair international and the welfare trade organization um that would in terms of give a measure which is comparable across each that's not to say you're asking them in the procurement to only go with those they could you know they can choose whatever they want it's just about how they record it and how you measure it um and that would give a definition of the he's the two major systems internationally that have been recorded as such in your spending and you can compare those as like to like across yours and across organizations um so that's yeah that's what we would prefer it does seem that's a simpler approach to it because what you're describing is going down into the weeds and you know coming up with other definitions and so on which really are very difficult to measure yeah yeah certainly i would say you've got two well recognized international um systems in place um and they are in terms of they have their product labels so they're identified as such so it's not a question of having to you know dig out information about is this fair trade certified or not it's there on the on the labeling and on the marketing of it and that to us would be the simplest way of doing it to be able to compare now there may be other things equally as good as something that's been fair trade certified and organizations may choose to buy them that's fine in terms of that doesn't rule that out i'm not changed i'm not suggesting changing the procurement rules it's just about having a indicator on measure that you can use to how best can this be taken forward i mean definition is really important um as i said i would hope there was some way in terms of and i would in some ways put it back to the committee as in terms of the the parliamentary experts and the committee here to say what's the best way of doing this through the process of parliaments or government and but some definition in guidance i presume is easier to do in guidance than legislation it'd be great in legislation but i'm not suggesting a whole new piece of legislation but some sort of guidance that is issued to public bodies that says here's the definition of what we mean by fairly traded i'll set out in the act in terms of and here's therefore what you should record and then be able to be measured lindsay do you want to add anything to that um we don't do work specifically around fair trade so probably don't have anything that hasn't already been said well okay thank you thank you Colin smith followed by my thank you my colleague's got some questions lindsay on gender inequality so you're not getting off lightly but i i want to pursue the the points around around fair trade and although it's not a a declarable interest just just for the record i'm the convener of the cross party group in fair trade and also chair the dumfries and galloway fair trade steering group and i feel a bit under pressure almost to answer martin's question about how we actually pursue that definition um do you just just just on that point matton do you think is guidance enough or do we need to underpin that definition legally through legislation just to make sure it does translate into practice across public procurement um i would prefer it in legislation in terms of that stronger however if that would take such a long period of time in terms of to get to rather and guidance is quicker and actually just works in terms of actually giving those instruments to do it um then i can see the advantage of going to guidance i mean i don't know enough about the parliamentary process about what it would take to take that through as legislation um in terms of is there a legislation that it could be added into um is there something available that could be done in the near future or is it in terms of if it's about getting a separate piece of legislation onto the um you know the parliamentary timetable is that something which would be more problematic and therefore would it be helpful to have guidance if it's be done quicker in the meantime but in principle yes legislation having it in there because actually if we go back to the act itself back in um you know 2014 in the run up to that we were arguing that it you know that should be in legislation in terms of in that act in terms of obviously we didn't win that argument but in terms of um but i think in terms of um now yes it would be great to get to the legislation if that was possible in the near future but otherwise i think guidance might be that it's an easier way of getting it um it takes us forward more quickly than i would be perfectly happy with that as well okay that's helpful now notwithstanding the challenges of of actually then measuring something that we don't have a consistent definition of based on the work you've done with public sector organisations and the best practice that's out there can you say a bit about what is the scale of fair trade products being bought by the public sector within this multi billion pounds procurement they have and do you think that scale actually matches our ambition as a nation to be a fair trade nation um as we've already discussed and as you've indicated it's difficult to actually say what the the actual level is for all sorts of reasons we've discussed um my guess would be and it is a a guess based on the evidence which is you know has all the problems that we've mentioned is that we do have in some areas a reasonable amount of fair trade items being procured and particularly in some of the catering items um however could we go a lot further yes we could um i mentioned earlier i think around textiles particularly around sort of uniforms and so on if you think about how many times you go into a public building and somebody is wearing a branded t-shirt or polo shirt um with the name of the organisation on it a bit huge um if you think about the amount of textiles in terms of used and other products used in terms of the NHS for instance there is huge more we could do so yeah in terms of that has been progress over the years with regards to fair trade and procurement in the public sector there is so much more and so much more potential um that um yeah i would i would want us to be more ambitious i would the whole purpose of doing the um report was to actually help us do that in terms of levering up um setting a baseline and then it's been able to measure it and that way that's why in terms of although it seems a technical point about definitions and about recording um it's a huge way in terms of if you have that definition and recording in place to actually get that leverage to actually say well look you can do more because you can then say here's an example of somebody who is doing more um here you know in terms of so i think um although it seems very much like we're talking technicalities around definition and around um around how you record it it would be a huge lever that could be used to actually um reach that more ambitious what we can do as a fair trade nation in terms of you know purchasing public and using public money in that way and then just the definition is clear a clear barrier to achieving that but is there any other barriers is is there an awareness barrier just public sector bodies not realising that actually maybe the local authority is is a supporter of fair trade that the the scottish government is a supporter of fair trade is there a barrier there where where those those carrying up the procurement work simply don't think about fair trade when they're pursuing particular contracts um there probably is in terms of across different organisations i think one of things in terms of if you go back to the report that i mentioned we collect together in that report policies and also expenditure levels now with all the questions about the expenditure levels now it's measured um i would say there's not a clear correlation between those who have the strongest policies and those who have the biggest expenditure um that's um there is some but not in terms it's not obvious that if you have the strongest possible so that that does suggest something about within public bodies how communication between corporate um policymakers or policymakers in different areas of the public body are then connected into their officers in terms of procurement officers so how in terms of that's you know in terms of how are people working in public bodies across departments across different areas of interest in that and i think um that it may well be that some cases that procurement officers making the decisions around procurement are not aware of the policy decisions being taken elsewhere in the organisation thank you thank you very much clen good morning to you both thank you for joining us and thank you for what you've said so far um i want to just explore some of the equality's issues lindsay that you were picking up earlier you said earlier in in response to a previous question that there's a distinction between um using procurement or using the mechanisms that procurement enables for tackling or addressing gender inequalities compared to more broadly equalities more genuinely could you just unpack that a little bit more and say where where what are the mechanisms that are any of those mechanisms actually ever in conflict with each other if you're looking at different types of different groups that we might want to be focused on just just unpack that a little bit more sure i mean a good example of uh thinking about particular issues at a social level that have um a specific um protected characteristic related equality issue poverty is the first thing that comes to mind um and you know the require that there's a strategy on tackling poverty tackling child poverty um that you know that is obviously a priority right now but poverty in scotland is gendered women are much more likely to experience poverty than men women are more likely to experience in work poverty more likely to experience persistent poverty and find it harder to escape and women with caring responsibilities and single parents in particular 90 of whom are women are trapped in poverty by a really wide range of factors many of which are directly linked to their experiences of the labour market concentration and low paid work um and so the gender pay gap is really a key factor in women's inequality and women's higher levels of poverty and women's poverty is inextricably linked to child poverty so if you're thinking about work on child poverty you need to think about what are we doing to tackle gender inequality women's poverty in order to be doing that proper properly you can't just think about child poverty or poverty writ large um and in terms of mechanisms that could be used um to tackle that um policies where at a policy level for example you know the the scottish child payment you know is something that was you know the gender was a factor in decision making around that you know and it's money that goes directly into mothers pockets which you know helps to address child poverty um there are other policies where it's perhaps not being considered um very well for example green jobs the definition of green jobs um is very male dominated all the jobs that fall under the definition that's being used right now um are very heavily male dominated which means the investment under that strategy is going to go into men's jobs and disadvantaged women and then you're not if you're not thinking about gender there you're missing the fact that care jobs are low carbon and actually if you invest the same amount of money in care jobs as you say did in construction um you'll implot you I think you can generate something like 2.8 times more jobs out of it you've got a great return on investment so those kind of things just show how um you know tackling specific inequality related um or environmental related issues really need to have thinking about those specific groups underneath them and in order to think about any potential conflicts we need to be thinking intersectionally you know it's not women are not a homogenous group we need to be thinking about what are the specific experiences of racially minoritised women of disabled women and when you're able to do that you realise that when you're thinking about those groups that are most disadvantaged it's unlikely that you're going to hit conflicts because if you do something for example for racially minoritised women who has a disability you're going to be doing something for all three of those protected characteristic groups you're also going to be doing something on poverty writ large as well. So if we look at how we can use that analysis and understanding in how we either improve or add to the procurement landscape that we've got I think this this also links back to something that you were saying earlier around public sector equality duty and the the failure to connect procurement and the public sector equality duty what would you see as as being important is it is it about specific conditionality is it is it about a different kind of waiting we've talked about you know that the price that this is social or environmental impact already but how is it thinking specifically about procurement? I mean well I think making clear explicit links between the public sector equality and the procurement act and the procurement strategy is obviously that's the place you need to start because public bodies will be like contracting authorities will be thinking about procurement with blinkers on without thinking about that wider thing you then need to have a procurement system that is set up such as there's sufficient gender competence within it so the people who are working in it understand well what are the potential gendered inequalities associated with this particular service that we're procuring so how can we then build that into conditionality or you know the subject of the contract because if you don't have that understanding of the specific inequalities or how they relate to that thing that you're working on then you're not going to be able to do that and then you know further down the line the evaluators of the the tenders need to understand all of that as well and then the people who are evaluating this is success of the contract so that is really speaking to this institutional gender competence and equalities competence that is really missing across the public sector and as I mentioned earlier you know 17 years on from the initial gender equality duty that's really really disappointing and you mentioned about waiting I think what we would like to see is equality to be sufficiently weighted in the procurement decision making process such as it has a meaningful influence on the outcome you know so the the public sector equality duty is a due regard duty there's very clear definition of what that is and you know there should be enough understanding about what that means in relation to equality and so if you if you build all those things in and enable them to have a meaningful influence which you know is an appropriate level of influence you know it's not necessarily going to be the the single most important factor in your your tendering but it needs to have an influence it's not can't just be something that you tick off saying I've done an equality impact assessment on this particular tender and it's fine which is often you know what we see on work to mean stream equality into various other aspects of public sector practice I mean you said earlier that you don't you don't often see equalities issues being being talked about in procuring and I think that's something maybe we can follow up on in different ways one final question if I may Martin to you when we're talking about the sustainable procurement duty and this is kind of looking at the other end of the telescope to the question Modo asked about local economies and building and sustaining local resilience do you think there's enough understanding or awareness of the value of things like fair trade in that sustainable procurement duty when if we think about wanting Scotland to be a socially and environmentally responsible nation you know thinking about our impact globally is does the procurement do the guidelines the regulations do they allow enough of those kinds of narratives to come in are we thinking about those those kinds of things I think across actually not just the public sector more widely there is a very sort of limited view of an environmental impact of decisions that they've taken and often for instance on food and other products but in terms of people talk about food miles and air miles as if that was the only factor to be taken into account and clearly it's a factor to be taken into account in terms of the carbon footprint of a product is the issue about how far has it traveled and how has it traveled but it is only one factor in that carbon footprint how that product is produced and how it is then consumed will have a clear impact on the carbon footprint of that product and carbon footprint is only one element of the overall environmental impact and other things have to be taken into account so I think there is generally in that sort of area of debate in terms of perhaps sometimes frustrated by the way in which some of these issues are presented and it's set up as sort of local as always the best option and quite clearly there is a big weight to doing things locally for all sorts of reasons in terms of community wealth building reasons and in terms of it does reduce travel and the air miles or food miles but that has to be put into a broader context because it is possible to produce something locally in a very bad way and so in terms of and it is complex in terms of you can have for instance in terms of you can produce something quite some distance away seasonally in terms of and then transport it in a way that has much less of an environmental impact than producing something out of season locally so there's all I'm saying is there is all sorts of factors to do with environmental impact and not just I mean carbon footprint being one of them and air miles and food miles being an element of that but there's a bigger issue around in terms of and looking at some of the elements of fair trade that people perhaps don't immediately think about when they think about fair trade around issues around what can be done around biodiversity in terms of the production of plants and so on and also issues around gender equity around in terms of power in terms of within communities and about how decisions are made all those sorts of positive impacts which have a positive impact in terms of environmentally are often overlooked for what is an easier quicker measure and I'm not in any way saying it isn't an important measure it clearly is I mean how things are transported from one place to the other has a significant impact but it's not the only one other things have to be looked at as well it's almost like our waiting system is far too simplistic and it's simplistic to be manageable and yeah that that's that's okay thank you okay thank you and thank you to our witnesses this morning for your evidence that's much appreciated I will now close the public part of the meeting and we'll move on to private session