 Fonwch i ddim yn gweithio y yw'r 9 ffoeig os ym mwy yw'r 240 ffyglwr i ddim yn ein cyfwyr Cymru. Y ymwyaf yw prifysgwyr sydd i gweithio'r fiyth a'r lyfrig o fawr byd i Lleaith Gwneud ynglyn sydd yn cyfwyricaid peolwgol f Hybridd injusticell. Felly, ddim ar gyfer左i'r Fyglwyr Gwneud mewn cyfwyr. Felly, rwy'n gweithio Lleaith yw bob Doris i'r cyfwyr, ac maen nhw ddim yn ei ddweud yn gweithio i'r fywod. I have nothing specific to clear other than to say my declarant is clearly on the Parliament website but nothing specific to the work of this committee. So our second item of business this morning is the fourth evidence session of the committee's post-life scrutiny of the procurement reform Scotland Act 2014. May I welcome Gillian Cameron, programme manager, the supplier development programme and Graham Cooke, head of Scottish Government Procurement Services, Peter Hunter, who is joining us remotely, who is regional manager with Unison Scotland and Mary Mitchell, chief procurement officer and Julie Welsh, chief executive of Scottish Excel. I would prefer members to my register of interests, I'm a member of Unison. So it's always members and witnesses that are asked to keep questions and answers as concise as possible, and if MSPs could direct their questions and name the member, they would like to answer that would be helpful for managing the meeting. Could I maybe first ask the purpose of this inquiry as a post-legislative inquiry into the 2014 act? So we're interested in some broad kind of reflections on what the key changes have been to procurement in Scotland since the 2014 act was implemented and what are the biggest challenges that might be remain. I will come to Scotland Excel first, if you want to comment on the 2014 act, and then I'll invite Peter to come in. Okay, thank you, convener. Thanks everyone. So we believe the 2014 act has been a real success story in terms of using public procurement as a driver for social and other benefits. So across the public sector, buyers have been driving improvements such as increased community benefits, increasing the payment of the real living wage and working more closely with our local supply chains. In Scotland Excel, we have over a thousand suppliers on our frameworks and 75 per cent of those are SMEs, and that's not by chance, that's by design, and that's by using the processes that we can to do that. Sixty per cent of our suppliers are Scottish, and that represents 65 per cent of the spend that goes through our frameworks as well. And also by encouraging the payment of the real living wage, where at the point now we're at 89 per cent of our suppliers pay the real living wage, and that's been moving up over the last of 10 years, but certainly since the act came into play. Probably the one area that I think has been a bit more challenging for us, and actually across the public sector, is in relation to climate change and embedding standardised climate improvements consistently. We have made some headway with that, but we believe that there's much more that we can do. And also that there's some real transformation required to meet our net zero objectives by 2045. Thank you, convener. Pete Harrell, then come to you. There will be a chance to expand further with other members' questions, but it's kind of the key changes since 2014, and what are maybe some of the main challenges that remain? The ambition of the 2014 act and the associated regulations is very welcome, and we're aware of numerous benefits. To take the English equivalent as a benchmark, the Scottish statute and the regulations are more ambitious and more progressive in that content, and in our experience also their impact, I'm thinking particularly of contrast in regulation 19 and 15 regulations and the obligations in relation to social, environmental and employment standards. The difficult is, I think, the pandemic revealed that there still are big structural differences between commission services and statutory services in key things like health and safety cultures generally, but also specifically in relation to access to PPEs and supply chains. Now that might be partly to do with political priorities and decision-making within the systems that are created, but I think it's also partly about the culture that exists within the firms that are commissioned within the procurement system. So there is definitely scope for improvement. The current issue that we're dealing with at the moment is very poor working conditions for migrant workers on skilled worker visas in firms who've been commissioned against fair work standards, but they're not combined with those in practice. So there is a still a delivery gap, which can be very problematic in those locations where problems occur. Thank you. If we may come to Graham and Gillian next. We might reflect on the 2014 act, but in last week's evidence session, witnesses were suggesting that there was a drive to increase the use of national frameworks, so do you have any comments on that and what the reasons might be for an increase in promoting and using national frameworks? Thank you, convener. I represent the central government sector and that includes the national pan public sector contracts and frameworks that are used by all of the public sector in Scotland. In terms of a drive to use them more, there's certainly a drive to identify further opportunities for collaboration, and most of the collaboration is through various collaborative contracts, both the national pan public sector ones and the ones that are placed by organisations like Scotland Excel. That drive, though I should stress, isn't in tension with the sustainable procurement duty within the 2014 act, so if you look at the levels of, for example, Scottish produce under these frameworks and also the level of lotting, the level of geographical cover and so on, not only is it significant, it has been moving up and up over the last 10 years since the act was put in place. Is it real? Yes, because there's always a drive to improve and to collaborate further, but I don't think that it undermines any of the principles of the act. In fact, I think that it supports delivery. Would that be a view that Scotland Excel shares in terms of national frameworks? Yes, we think that there has been a real drive to increase the uptake of national frameworks and other arrangements. As you probably know, we're governed by a joint committee. Our committee members are very keen to increase uptake, as is our chief executive officer's group. The reason for that is that they want to get the best value that they possibly can. They want to find savings, so that's a huge driver for us, not the only driver, but it is a driver for local government. Local government pays us to put in place these arrangements, so if they're then replicating that locally, that means that they're paying for it twice. The Scottish Government suggests that £12,500 for one tender exercise, so if we're doing it on behalf of 32, then there's the opportunity cost of that as well. The other couple of things are there's a real scarcity around technical and procurement skills across the Scottish public sector, so we need to use them really wisely. Also, some of the arrangements that we put in place are in markets that can be quite litigious, and one of the appealing things of using our arrangement is that Scotland Excel ends up in court rather than individual councils, so there's certainly an appeal in that. There's lots of reasons why that drives to increase uptake is happening, and as Graeme says, I think that it supports the legislation. I might move on to other questions, because I know that members will pick up on issues relevant to that. I'll move to Martel Fraser first to be followed by Colin Beattie. Thank you. Good morning to the panel. I want to ask about an issue that this committee and predecessor committees over many years have wrestled with, which is the question of how we use procurement and public sector spend to support local economies, local communities and local businesses. We recognise that there's always a tension between trying to get good value for the taxpayer, which might lead to bundling of contracts, for example, into larger packages, which might make them less accessible to local businesses, particularly SMEs, as opposed to trying to direct that spend, whether they support the local economy. I wonder if I can ask you how the changes in the procurement legislation have actually helped that process, if they have, in terms of access to local businesses. I know that Gillian is part of the work that you do, so I might start with you. I think that working with the likes of Scotland Excel and the Scottish Government and the other centres of expertise, we try to see how we can help small businesses to access those contracts. There is definitely an art to tendering, and I think that we've probably talked about that before. Ensuring through the likes of ourselves as an organisation that is there to help small businesses understand how to access a framework contract and how to bid for that is really, really important. I think that looking at how we improve the local knowledge and the visibility of those opportunities, time is something that's always seen as difficult for suppliers to be able to bid for things, so seeing an active pipeline is great to be able to move forward on that. That's one of the things that, from our point of view, is an organisation. We try to ensure that there is as much possibility visibility of what frameworks the local authorities are using in particular, because, obviously, the small suppliers are once again at local level, so if they know they're using the Scotland Excel one, then that's helpful to them to know the route to market around it. I'll come to Mary in a minute, because I know that you were nodding away, but I'll just go back to you, Gillian. How would you mark progress in this in terms of the changes that we've seen in the legislation? There's no work to be done, but do you think that you're making good progress? I mean, I think there's a lot of visibility out there now, which probably when you go back before the act was in order, there wasn't that. I do think there's been a lot progress around that, but that comes with the good things, the good policy that the Scottish Government are doing, but that added an extra burden to suppliers to understand about the ask around net zero, about the ask about fair work first. So I think that it's something that's a learned skill. It's not necessarily something that maybe a micro small business will have, so the role that we play I think is highly important in that, because that's often seen as it's difficult to get into. I never shy away from saying to small suppliers about the need to actually learn the skill, and once they've learned it once, hopefully they can replicate that many times, and that's another positive. I think the amount of information that's now available through annual procurement ports and published information is a big, big benefit to small businesses, but they need to be able to take that time and understand where to find that, what to look at and how to use that information. It's really important. From the perspective of Scotland Excel, we've, through the legislation, been able to lot in such a way that we believe helps local supply develop quite well. In the time period we're looking at, that has grown for us around 20 per cent of our supply base has you know, the growth in Scottish-based businesses has grown by about 20 per cent since we started out until now. We do that by lotting essentially, so splitting out the disciplines that are required under a national framework, bringing particularly in things like energy efficiency contracting. We've broken it down into different specialisms so that you don't need to be all things to all people in order to bid. Then we also apply in almost all our frameworks an ability to service option for contractors to make, so they can tell us which local authority areas, and sometimes sublots of those local authority areas, there are a few in milk for example, it's not possible for one small milk provider to supply the whole of Ergyll and Bute, so we split that up into various areas. We have mechanisms and all of those are available to us under the act currently, and if they're used as Gillian says with our forethought, we can make sensible differences to what happens in local supply bases. Can you say a little bit about what your chain of communication is with the business community? Are they engaging with you on a regular basis? In terms of the communication that we make early on, we always issue a prior information notice and invite comment from the supply base. What knowledge do we need in order to be able to shape this requirement appropriately? Finding those suppliers as well to make sure that we're engaging well and there are links across Scotland in how the different organisations do that, but Public Contract Scotland plays a role in there for us as well. There is a gap I think between the number of small businesses in Scotland and those that are using Public Contract Scotland, so that's an opportunity for us all to promote further. The information piece there still has some work to be done. In 2019-20, the spending with SMEs by the Scottish Government Corp was just over £120 million. That's direct spend. That's not in the supply chain, although we obviously also push SME access into the supply chain. In 2022-23, the total direct spend with SMEs was £380 million or a half. The money speaks. It shows that the more and more spend is being driven towards SMEs. The 2014 act, I would say, is absolutely at the heart of that. At last week's evidence session, I asked questions about whole-life costing. Clearly, the initial pricing is not just the only criteria that should be used, although there seem to be evidence that, in some cases, it was. However, there seem to be some difficulties about the witnesses and their evidence doing this whole-life costing. The criteria under which it would be done seems to be variable. To what extent do frameworks support the consideration of whole-life costing and the quantification of longer-term benefits that quality measures can provide that might offset a higher initial cost? How serious is that? Graham, maybe I can start with you. The whole-life costing is a very professional and expensive endeavour. It is not just done in every procurement exercise. Everything in procurement is about relevance and proportionality. Where it is relevant is where we know that there are significant costs within the broader lifetime of a product or a service, so it is absolutely included. That is bread and butter for procurement. However, Julie mentioned the constraints in terms of professional public sector bars out there. They are in huge demand. We use the resources carefully and deploy them where it makes most sense. If we have a complicated product or service, then whole-life costing is absolutely done. There are elements in the frameworks that support that. When individual public bodies draw down from those frameworks, they can reassess at their many competition when they draw down and do a competition. They can fold in their specific requirements. Given the complexity of the public sector in Scotland and the range of different types of organisation, geography and so on, whole-life costing really has to be specific to the organisation. It would be an incredibly complicated and expensive endeavour to do it at the framework level, because trying to understand the whole-life costs for NHS Orkney would be very different from trying to do the same thing for the City of Edinburgh Council. What would be the criteria that would determine whether whole-life costing is required? You said complex and so on. Can you give us an example? I will give you a procurement cliché, paperclips. We can see that there are not an awful lot of costs associated with buying paperclips and then using them. Something as simple as that is that you would not be looking at whole-life costing. You might consider whether the material is recyclable, but you would not build in the actual pound-sign costs of that lifetime. Where it comes to something like an expensive piece of, let us say in the fire service, an expensive fire appliance, then absolutely you are going to look at what is the fuel consumption, maintenance costs and, at the end of life, does it have a residual value? You might take the whole of that into consideration when buying fire appliances. Those are two rather extreme examples, but those are the sorts of things that would be considered. Using your example, it does not seem that complicated to work out whole-life costing for a fire engine because, as you say, fuel consumption, maintenance and so forth, that you can project into the future using obviously some inflation factor and so forth. It does not sound that complex. When we award a contract on the basis of a tender analysis, that includes whole-life costing, that the mechanism needs to stand up in court and be defensible. That is where it becomes even more important to get it absolutely right. You have then got the complications of how long will an appliance last. Will it be 10 years, 15 years, 20 years? The manufacturer might say something, but depending on your maintenance schedule, you might get more out of it. For a procurement officer who is not an expert in the manufacture and maintenance of a fire appliance, it is quite a complicated endeavour to work all of that out, to work out the residual value of a part that might be 20 years old by the time the appliance gets scrapped. I should stress that I have made that up. I am not an expert in fire appliances. However, trying to understand that gets as much information as possible so that the mechanism is then defensible in court should someone choose to challenge the decision, is a significant piece of work. You are saying that it is an invitation for consultants to come in and draw up the whole-life costing. At one extreme, that would be an answer for some public bodies, yes, but as with all procurement, it is about balancing off the different opportunities and risks, but some organisations may choose to bring in external expertise. Julie, maybe you can give something? I think that it certainly is more of a simple exercise to do at an organisational level, and I was ahead of procurement at a council before doing this job, and we did it for a fleet, so fleet is a common one that we would have looked at the whole-life costing for things like tyres and that. At the national level, it is a bit more challenging, but we certainly give it some thought, and I am going to pass over to my colleague Mary, who has got some comments that we have been reflecting on this on the way here, fortunately. Tires is actually a really good example of where a national framework can be established with a supply chain that offers a range of different tyres with different performance levels, different costs and different lifetimes associated with them and different levels of mileage. In terms of the whole-life costing acquisition, the cost of use and the cost of maintaining and the cost of getting rid of the end-of-life costs or recycling, whatever the end of that product is, that is quite an easy one to work through in your head with tyres, because we all presumably have those on our own vehicles. We at a national level will create that framework, but then at a local level we have recently created a small team to help councils assess what the most cost-effective products might be for them under a framework, so we call it our savings team, but essentially that is about helping councils to identify the best value in using our frameworks. We have not limited it to our frameworks. We are also working with them, where they ask for support on anything additional. I will add one more thing on whole-life costing. I think that where we are heading now is probably beyond that, into life cycle costing, which is really about the social and environmental impact of the products. Where did it come from in the first place? What is its credentials, I suppose, in terms of how it got to the point of use in a public body? That is much harder for us to calculate and certainly quite something that we are struggling with just now, but that for me is probably the evolution of whole-life costing. We will need to be much more into the environmental and social side. If I logged on to your site, would I find anything about whole-life costing? Any guidelines? Any formula template? We have a members area available for members that has a login. Behind that, each framework has information, and there is also information associated with the work of our savings team that, depending on what you are looking for, you might be able to find some of that if you were using our friends. Is there enough information there to enable somebody to put together a proposal? A supplier or a council to determine how they would use it? It would be whoever was like the council or whatever. On some frameworks, more than others, there will be. We have some tools developed in frameworks where they can filter by products and various different requirements on those products. Not all frameworks have that, but as part of our continuous improvement, we are looking at how we can make that easier to identify. Thank you, convener. Specifically for Mary Mitchell. Mary Mitchell mentioned the social environmental impacts. I also sit on the Nettys Euro Committee in this Parliament, and there is a circular economy bill going through that committee. One of the proposed amendments to that is in relation to procurement and human rights due diligence and environmental impact in global supply chains. I am just wondering if the comment you made in relation to social environmental is maybe trying to future proof some of this stuff about other legislates that may emit from other committees in this Parliament that I sit on. Certainly, the reform act itself made an effort to link to climate change at the time, and that, as Julie reflected in her opening remarks, is the thing that we are still finding the most challenging about the development potential that we have as a procurement community. I think that in respect of how we would measure the impact of any of those products. To give you a relatively live example, we are working through a process at the moment where the products associated with the tender, we hope to be able to evidence their environmental impact, but the information that we could get hold of was very arduous for suppliers to provide to us. We have done it on one product group where it is quite well established and has been for a decade or so, but less so on the broader range of products. There is still a gap between what we would like to be able to do and what, in practical terms, we believe is possible at the moment. I was just going to ask Gillian whether she had anything to add on that one. I think that it is something that we try to touch on when we are talking to suppliers, because often small micro SMEs maybe just think about putting in a bid and they don't think about whole life costing, they don't think about the cost, it's to them to win the contract and the lifetime of it. I think it's useful to have more information about what that might look like for them to make informed decisions around it, whether that would be in the tender documents, I'm not sure, perhaps Mary could talk about that. I think it's something that's an education piece, certainly for small businesses, is to think about that and not just think about how they're going to win this contract, maybe put in a cheap price if you like to win that contract, they need to think about the bigger picture of being sustainable and that it's not going to bankrupt them by putting in that price, so whole life costing definitely plays an important part into it. Thanks. I've just got one small question to ask and maybe Gillian, I'll start with you on this one. The committee has taken evidence that some suppliers can be accepted on to a framework but then gets no work over a period of years. Do you monitor the outcomes for suppliers and what kind of support do you give them so that they're getting something out of this and avoid a perception that it's just a waste of time? It's something that I hear about, hear suppliers say that and I always advocate you're better being on it than not on it. There's a piece of work to do to get on it. It depends on the type of frameworks, whether they're ranked or not, whether there's more opportunity for suppliers to be picked off that framework to actually have work. I think there's probably more opportunity to look at how there's supply chain opportunities in the framework. Probably Mary's better at answering about the numbers because certainly I don't have those numbers. We've worked on some contracts with Scotland Excel helping to promote and encouraging small businesses to bid on those contracts and certainly we've seen a good update from the suppliers actually bidding on those contracts when we have been involved. I haven't got any stats regarding final outcomes. That would be something that would come directly from the actual buyers. Mary. Thank you. I think the critical thing there is in the mobilisation of the framework for us. It's the framework. The information that's passed to those that will use the framework, the buyers in the member organisations that work with Scotland Excel. The information that we share with suppliers at that point about the options they have to engage with that buying community, the promotion they can do of the products and services they've offered under the framework, I think is critical. In terms of the sorts of roles that organisations like ourselves can have in that, we run mobilisation events. We run category specific events so that the category of spend we have an event planned later this year around our construction portfolio in general, bringing together suppliers across all of that supply base and the buyers to foster a kind of... I've got the impression that there's actually a process of proactively going there and seeing which suppliers are not getting work. Maybe I could answer that. Deputy convener, as part of our contracts and supplier management, we very closely monitor which suppliers get spend across the framework. As you'll know, there's no commitment to business on a framework. That's how it's designed. What we see and what we've seen on a number of occasions are the suppliers who go out and actively sell their services once they've been awarded a place on a framework are the ones that tend to be more successful. Because we don't rank any of our frameworks, our councils are free to use whichever suppliers that provides best value to them. Sometimes that might exclude a new entrant that's on the framework. We had one example in particular in Tyres where they started out in Renfrewshire and ended up with half the country, but they were actively going out and selling the fact that they were on the framework and they managed to increase their business as a result of that. So we do see that happening. But for smaller suppliers, is there any support for them in terms of how to make best use once they're on the framework? That's a question that can come up as part of the contract and supplier engagement that we do in an ongoing basis. The advice that we would give them would be that you have to be out and actively contacting councils and telling them about your goods and services. Because we have to be, we can't be given one supplier more support than another, it could get a bit messy. So we'll give them general advice about how they might increase their share, but we need to make sure that everybody gets that same advice and that same opportunity. You know how many actually haven't received any work. I don't have that figure to hand, but that's something that we could get from you. Is it a figure that you monitor? Yes. And what do you do with that figure? Well, it's part of our contract. We've got an internal governance group, our contract steering group, where we look annually at performance across every framework. We look to see where the business is going and we look to see if our customers are happy with it, if the suppliers are happy with it. So we do that on an ongoing basis, but we wouldn't actively then go out and speak to the suppliers who haven't been successful. For the reason that we've got over a thousand suppliers across almost 80 frameworks, it just wouldn't be feasible for us to do that, but if they approached us as part of the contract and supplier management, we'd certainly try and advise them and signpost them to the relevant people and councils who could help them. Could I make some progress and I'll let other members in? Can I just ask one quick question to Gillian? In your briefing for the committee, Gillian, you commented that the support that you received from the Scottish Government has fallen in real terms since 2008. I just want to expand a bit on whether that meant what you can offer is constrained, or have you managed to work within the budget? We do recognise the pressure on Scottish budgets in all areas. You're not the only organisation that's under this kind of financial picture, but do you want to comment a bit more on that? Absolutely. The truth is that it has fallen in real terms, plus we've all seen the cost for doing business has increased substantially in the last couple of years as well. What we've managed to do is to look at how we use online more to try and keep some of our costs down, but as a unique organisation we are a national shared service, so all 32 local authorities are members of us, plus about 18 other public bodies, including the Scottish Parliament. What we are working with is very much the councils that come to us proactively and want to do additional work. We have core training courses and then we have what we call a line tender training courses. When they have a particular opportunity coming up, they want to engage local businesses and local suppliers. They will come to us and we will work together to help to promote that opportunity and also to deliver training on how to bid for that opportunity. What we have found is that our ability to do that is constrained because I have a team of five people and so there are a number of opportunities out there. There is always so much that we can do at any one time. We have great aspirations to do a lot more. I think that the service that we are offering through the line tender training is really important because it is as close as we can get to offering almost one-to-one support to allow businesses to understand what they ask is in the contract and what the requirements are with regard to fair work first or net zero to be able to bid for that opportunity. We have seen really high success rates when we have managed to do that. Our challenge with our funding is certainly how we can do more. This year we are going to make a loss again, which is something that is not palatable. We are in a fortunate position that due to Covid we have some money in our reserves, but that is not a long-term future for us. It is a conversation that we are already having with the Scottish Government at the moment. Is it just the Scottish Government that funds you? No, all 32 local authorities fund us as well as the other members. There is a national manifesto out that said there will be a bespoke business unit that will support SMEs and third sector organisations for tendering. The programme has already started in the local authority. For once it was a joined-up approach rather than reinventing the wheel and doing something separately. That has been part of the success because we have that buy-in for the local authorities. It is in their interest to engage with their local businesses. For us we have that infimigry, if you like, which Mary and Julie were saying. We are more impartial, but it is not that the buyer is looking for additional information for the spires. We can help to support them through the mechanisms that we have. I have a couple of questions about how we use procurement and how you can design the procurement activities that you have for social, environmental and other goods. Julie, in your opening questions you talked about the challenges around net zero targets and the climate change imperative that you have. How is it that the sustainable procurement duties are enabling or supporting the work that you are trying to do? If you say that there are challenges and barriers, what do we need to do to unpick that? I think that the problem is that it is difficult to be consistent in our approach to environmental sustainability. We have done a lot of work at looking at the items that we buy, like taking plastic straws off our food consumables frameworks. We have done a lot of things like that. We have also looked closely at the environmental accreditation for new-build housing and so on. We have some good examples of where we have built in good environmental criteria that has shown the outcomes that we would be looking for. Where that becomes challenging is across everything that we do. For example, we have a range of national care arrangements. We recognise that if you run a care home there may be a discussion to be had around the sustainability of that care home. We have not quite managed to do that there. Part of that is because there are such great challenges in other ways. What we have tried to do is target where we think that we can get the best benefit. What we would like to get to at some point is some way of recording net zero carbon capture and different ways of recording that through supply chains. We do not have a consistent way of doing that across the country. That is part of the discussions that we will be having with our colleagues in government as they are looking to replace some of their systems in relation to procurement about how we can capture the environmental information that we need so that we can then improve on that across everything that we do. That is something that you do alongside the cabinet colleagues. We have had a conversation about whole-life costing and the benefits that are associated with that. Is there anything that you want to say on the social issues? There is a duty around tackling inequality for instance, gender pay gaps and those kinds of things. Is it a data thing? Is it not necessarily having the information to track that through supply chains, through products? There is a mixture of things at play. I think that we do use equality impact assessments but mainly for our care arrangements. We have not rolled that out across everything that we do in our portfolio and that is something that we are looking at because I think that that would help with a number of those things. There is also a point that was made earlier about focusing your efforts where you can get the best outcome. Procurement in national arrangements has been seen as a way of getting everything at once. We will live and wage community benefits environment with sustainability and the list goes on. What we are doing at the moment is looking at every good and service that we purchase and saying, what should our focus be here? Is this something that the environment is an issue and should that be our number one focus? It is about trying to focus your resources where they are going to get the best return and that is something that we are looking at at the moment. Graham, can I bring you in some of the questions around what are the barriers in the current system around achieving some of the social and environmental outcomes, tackling social and environmental inequalities that we have? I will deal with them separately if I may. I have worked in public sector procurement for 20 years. From day zero, environmental impact was already in Scottish public tenders and it was a consideration. The 2014 act was ahead of its time and my view is that the UK Government Procurement Reform Act that is just coming into play now is in many ways playing catch-up with the 2014 Scottish act. The reason that I mention is that procurement, when it comes to environment, is ahead of the curve. Byers out there can never be experts in absolutely everything—I will not go back over the whole-life cost thing—but they cannot be absolute experts in carbon counting, for example. They have to rely on agreed standards. If we are buying a contract to maintain gas central heating, it is very easy to say, show us your gas-safe certificate and buyers can rely on that. There is no internationally agreed standard for carbon counting, so we cannot just point to that. In many ways I feel procurement is ahead of the game and that is actually one of the barriers. We need these standards agreed so that we can then very easily build them into our tenders and contracts and say, you must meet this standard in order to win this contract. Can I just interrupt you on that? Would it be just inappropriate to have those standards in Scotland alone? Because we do not only deal with Scottish produce and Scottish supply chains, we need to look further afield, and we need to have comparability. Internationally, yes, because the World Trade Organization Government procurement agreement requires that we treat all bidders the same. We have then got the UK Internal Market Act 2020 that requires that we treat every supplier within the UK in exactly the same way. If we were to impose a Scottish standard, we would then have to say, or equivalent. We would have to somehow compare maybe an English standard, a Welsh standard, a French standard. An international standard has to be the gold standard. That is what is proportionate within most tender exercises. Clearly, if we are spending hundreds of millions, it might be proportionate to design something bespoke and agree with the marketplace to say, for these things, we are going to calculate it in this way. Do you agree, would you like to tweak that before we put the tender out and so on? The social standards. There are some agreed standards, so the real living wage, for example, is well understood. Someone else is responsible for that, and it is relevant within the whole of the UK. It is a similar issue. There are not standard measures of these things, nor are there standard places to go and look for them. One example policy that is increasingly important is women-owned companies' gender balance on boards, for example. There is no place we can go to find that information. It is not in companies' house. You do not need to record the gender of the person that owns a business within companies' house. Therefore, if we want that information, it has to be a question in a tender. Of course, that is gender balance on a board. It is an extra question that many suppliers would say, but how is that relevant to whether I can provide this service? A sole trader would say, well, how on earth do I answer that? We also need to balance the policy question with the fact that that is also the bureaucracy. Often people see a distinction between policy delivery and what many suppliers would call the bureaucracy within procurement. They are actually the same thing. That is quite a complicated answer, but I hope that I have addressed your question. That is helpful. Peter, if I can come to you. You mentioned earlier that the challenges that you have had in a specific example of migrant workers not being paid the living wage. As the commissioner should indicate, can you say a little bit about where you see the challenges for suppliers, for commissioners, in using the legislation to secure the social and environmental outcomes? Why are we failing in that? Why is there that example that you give of migrant workers not being paid appropriately? Are there other examples that you can point to of similar issues? The specific issue with migrant workers is that there are agencies that bring migrant workers to the UK. There is a huge demand for international recruitment, particularly in social care, but not exclusively because of the tight labour market at the moment. Many of these companies operate on a model where there is debt bondage, so workers are paying back. A hugely inflated cost is £678,000 or £10,000 for their training and travel. In the experience of all variety of problems, there are deductions from the wages, so the wages are not in wage compliance. We have had people who were evicted from their property because they were residential. They were inpatient care for serious medical problems, so they were evicted from their property because that is news for other migrant workers. People being destitute because they are dismissed for what we would say would be unfair reasons. As a result of no reports of public funds, the union uses this welfare fund to feed these workers and their children. These kinds of things are clearly, in our view, not compatible with sustainable procurement and fair work. Why do they happen? One problem that we have in Scotland, in our view, is that much as people in Scotland might not like the UK employment law framework, it has the benefit of being mandatory. We would say that procurement regulations in Scotland say that providers must secure contractual obligations from their providers to ensure that those UK statutory obligations are met. The difficulty when you come then in Scotland to say, well, we want to go further and we want to promote fair work, which is over and above UK minima, in order to be confident about the devolved competency of those approaches. The culture around fair work is very much encouragement and promotion of fair work. Within that conversation, the foundation or the platform beneath that of mandatory UK obligations would say that you cannot have people in modern slavery, you cannot have debt bondage, you cannot systematically discriminate against people, et cetera. That gets lost to a degree in Scotland. The mandatory nature of those UK obligations gets lost in Scotland because the culture within procurement is we can promote fair work and we can encourage it, but it's not mandatory. That's one problem. Julie mentioned earlier on that cost is a big driver. Don't we know it? For example, in social care, the big issue is capacity and price. How many people can they look after for as little money as possible? We don't have the support or ambition behind the human rights-based approach in the national care service bill, person-centred care planning and commissioning in behind those person-centred care plans. Where I am at the moment, we have a much-fonted granite AACD consortium here going on behind me here, which is wonderful. Their provision is currently capped at 30 hours per week. That spec down in care provision is driven by budget. In that climate, if you are coming forward with a sustainability agenda or a fair work agenda and you hit the juggernaut of capacity and price, price wins everything. You have two issues there, which is the culture around price and a tendency in our view to occasionally overlook the hard mandatory nature of UK law in order to get into a Scottish devolved conversation about encouraging a higher standard, the minimum core standards get lost. Then, within the procurement process, fair work in our view is not adequately weighted. It's improved gradually in the lifetime of the legislation, but shortly after the new regime coming into play, we surveyed local authorities and found that the median weighting was in the region of 5%, attached to the fair work criteria, which within the context of given that very few people get zero and very few people get five and we're getting three and fours, fair work really wasn't a critical factor, which in our view is problematic because the very close correlation between fair work and sustainability services attracting and retaining workers, building that skill base and delivering quality here as an example of one form of procurement. Finally, the big barrier is that much of this is not monitored. He asked about equality, for example. Regulation 9 in the 2012 regulations requires functioning authorities to ensure that public sector equality duties that sit with the contracting authority are then transposed within the procurement arrangements and the basis in which services are procured. You should be getting the quality and monitoring data that would enable local authority to look at the quality performance of the procured services as against the in-house services, but in reality in our experience, those things, they don't exist and they're not actively, the contract management culture as regards fair work and the quality is very poor. The ambition is great, many pieces of the jigsaw are there, but in the context of the cost of living crisis and huge cuts to public services, fair working in care, for example, is going backwards compared to where it was, I would say, in 2019. We'll have to see the context within which the procurement machine is, I think, probably operating quite effectively. It's just that the resources and the culture within which it's been required to deliver results tend to undermine the quality of the outcomes for workers. Therefore, society, I mean, I duck the question about whole life costs before. If you employ people on living wage and statutory sick pay and statutory maternity pay and statutory minimum family friendly policies, you will not attract and keep and grow the careers of talented young workers, for example in care, which is one of our biggest procurement spends. The whole life cost of that for the Scottish economy, when you have a staffing crisis, people don't want to work in care, you've got a growing else in the population, we can't meet the care needs we have at the moment far less, an expanded requirement for care. The whole life social cost of that, bargain basement purchase of social care work, the whole life cost of that is more than we can afford and certainly exposes the bidding price as being a deception, which, in our view, Scotland can no longer afford. There's a lot in that, and I could pick in lots of what you said, but just one final question, and it's around the ability, in your view, how can front-line staff influence goods and products that are part of procurement plans and procurement agreements? Is there a way or is there an effective mechanism for front-line staff to influence decisions around goods and services because they're the ones who are actually making services work using the goods themselves, or are those decisions usually taken at higher up levels? Is there a mismatch there? Is there a gap? We're heading in the right direction. Fair Work First is laden with potential, I think it's probably fair to say that we're all digesting the full potential of it, but if you link Fair Work First in relation to the employment by a public authority and its procurement, which the guidance does, and there is effective voice in relation to both employment and procurement, then in terms of just transitions, for example, and sustainable procurement, so I'm not just talking about the trade union worker agenda here, but workers having a voice within a sustainable procurement, both in terms of kit fire engines and tyres and other things, which I've learned a lot about this morning. In our view, workers are expert in these potentially, and could and should be involved in different levels of the procurement decision both in terms of sustainable strategies for procurement, but also the monitoring and review of what happens both in terms of work under these contracts, but also the products and sustainability of products, the whole life price or cost of these products, and I think a joint approach to all those issues, both goods services and employment, is now potential, potentially available to us under Fair Work First if we take effective voice and apply it to the whole public sector supply chain employment and purchasing. It's a great opportunity. It doesn't involve a huge investment time and resource by all the partners and the degree of cooperation which possibly hasn't existed in the past, but it's a very welcome opportunity, so potentially yes, but Scotland's great on ambition but we excel at ambition. As with other areas of support's life, it's the delivery that's what it's for. Thanks very much, Pita. I'll leave it there. I'll make some progress. Kevin Stewart will be followed by Brian Whittle. Thank you very much, convener, and good morning panel. I'm going to play devil's advocate a little bit here and maybe expand on some of the things that have been drawn out by Maggie Chapman there. I'm going to make an apology to the lawyers and a cadence amongst you right at the very start, because one of the things that we have heard, and I've heard it as a constituency MSP for years, I've heard it as a local authority elected member before that as well, that when it comes to procurement, the front line staff know exactly what's required, and then the lawyers and the acintents get their hands on it all, and the tender documents change dramatically, and you end up with the tender document which is accepting bids for something which is maybe not what the front line staff would actually want, whether that would be a fire engine or the contracting of care services. How would you respond to that, and do you feel, expanding on what Ms Chapman has said before, that front line staff have a key role to play in procurement, or are they shoved to one side now? Julie, please. Thank you. It's interesting to listen to the conversation about this. I think that it varies by organisation in terms of who leads and how much involvement there is of front line staff, and my own experience in Renfrewshire Council, which is 10 years ago, certainly the technical staff had a big say in what was procured and the development of specifications, but that's only one council, one public sector organisation. From a Scotland Excel perspective, we can't possibly deliver anything without the technical support from our council staff. Every example of what we buy, new-build housing is the property teams and councils that help us to develop the spec, for care it's the social care teams that help us to develop that. We set up a user intelligence group for every arrangement that we put in place, and it's made up of technical specialists who can tell us what the right thing is to buy, because we're not experts in fire engines or tyres or any of those things. For us, everything that we developed is developed with the sector and not for the sector, because we recognise that expertise lies out in the organisations. Let's go back to an organisation that Peter mentioned in his previous answer, and that's the Granite City Care Consortium. Some folk would say that the contract that they have is not typical in terms of a framework contract. For the simple reason that that contract itself allows for much more flexibility and autonomy for front-line staff to step up and step down to get care. That, in my opinion, is the right thing to do, because if you're going back to the whole-life costs scenario and the human cost scenario, who better than folk in the front line to be able to go into Mr or Mrs Smith's house and say, you know what, he or she's not great at the moment, it's time for us to step up a little bit more in terms of delivery, where others would argue that, in terms of other contracts that have been awarded through frameworks, that flexibility and autonomy for the front-line staff isn't there. How would you respond to that, Julie? Again, it's not really my experience. Let me say first, though, that I think it's not a one-size-fits-all. If what's been developed for the Granite City consortium is working there and the care is better, then absolutely that needs to be how they contract. The national arrangements that are put in place for care allow front-line commissioners all the flexibility that they would want. All we do is set a standard, nothing, there's no cost negotiation, it's sustainable rates. Actually, to give you an example, we've got a national care and support framework, where the rates are on average 15% higher than what councils were paying previously. The reasons for that are the sustainable rates, because that's what we insist on. We work on ethical commissioning and we ask for sustainable rates. I don't see the rub, really. I think that it's horses for courses. I think that there's times when a national arrangement is definitely the right thing because we can put those higher standards in place. There are local arrangements that seem to work exceptionally well, like the one that you've mentioned. We're quite happy to work with our council members in terms of developing what they need us to do, and that might not be everything that gets done. One of the things that frustrates me a lot—we've talked about the ambition that is here in Scotland—is that one of the things that we don't do is to export best practice. We don't pick up on the good practice that works for people and export that across the board. You talked about the framework levels being high for care and all the rest, but the lessons learned from the Grampian City of Care consortium, why is that good practice not being built into your frameworks and tendering documents? I would suggest that it is. We got audited in all our care arrangements in the last 12 months against the principles of ethical commissioning in the FAILI report and came out on top of that audit because we worked very hard to make sure that that's in place. What you're describing though with Granite is a completely different commissioning model, and that's where councils and HSCPs have a choice. They might choose to put in place their own local commissioning model and not use any of the national arrangements. That's absolutely fine, that's what works for them, but they might say, we'll use the national arrangement for the national care home contract or care at home or whatever that should happen to be. That's why local commissioning is so important because you do what's right for your local councillor, HSCPs. I'll probably come back to you on that. I can see Graeme Dianne to come in, but let's go to Peter next, please. My apologies, the button is unresponsive there. Thank you, Kevin. Nice to see it. I agree completely with your observations initially in relation to the importance of the autonomy of workers, particularly in a care context. I imagine that there will be other circumstances where the person closest to the ground has an expertise in relation to the service, and their autonomy is crucial. Using the care examples of the angel that we overuse it, but where there is a care need, which may vary from day-to-day or week-to-week depending on the personal circumstances of the service user, if it's going to be truly person-centred human rights base, the worker needs the autonomy to be able to listen to what the service user wants and flex the package in relation to the needs of that day or changed medical or personal circumstances in order for it to be person-centred. That means fair work. If you are satellite tracked, 15-minute visits, and the step-up and step-down of care is budget-driven exclusively with no regard for person-centred needs, then there is no autonomy, there is no person-centred care, and there are no human rights. I have a planet city customer, a very happy one, but I know that, in times of time, work comes down the line that the council has a budget cut, so your packages are reviewed and stepped up or stepped down in relation to funds, not need. We can trace the supply chain for that particular problem from Aberdeen City Council, Scottish Government, Westminster, local financial pressures, I would probably say who carries the greater responsibility, but finally, in relation to the question about local versus national, I think I would agree with, I think, as Louise said, that there is a technical job to balance the particular nature of the planet city framework or other arrangements like that with national frameworks. I don't necessarily see the question and answer as being mutually incompatible. I think that we need to have both national and local standards, but, from a care perspective, for person-centred human rights, you need to have, you need to recruit workers who are sufficiently secure and empowered within their role and skill to exercise the type of autonomy that you described, which we strongly endorse. I am familiar with the Granite City consortium, and I think that this is where the distinction between how we buy and what we buy is really important. That consortium was established through a standard procurement route. What was different was that commissioners decided that they wanted to buy a different service and they worked closely with the marketplace and they worked closely with procurement professionals to find a way through standard procurement routes to take that to market and to establish a different type of service. The best practice in the Granite City—there are all kinds of best practice there, or good practice, I should say—was the decision to buy something else. That decision does not sit with the procurement professionals and it does not sit in procurement legislation. How does that relate to the 2014 act? Does the 2014 act make that decision easier or harder or does it not make an impact on the scenario that you have outlined? I like to visualise procurement as a bit of a bow tie. Procurement is the knot of the bow tie. On one side, you have all of the organisational pressures, including budget, including policy requirements, front line services and people in the know, the technical people. All of that comes together and funnels down into the knot. That is the bit that faces the market. There are all kinds of things that people view as a procurement question, but it is maybe to do with the budget. The best procurement exercise in the world cannot fix an insufficient budget. When it comes to front line workers, it is not quite what I wanted. I really wanted supplier A, and then it turned through a procurement process and that has given me supplier C. In my experience, most front line workers do not have the time, perhaps, to think about the environmental impact of the product that they want. They are familiar with product one. They just want product one. However, when we start to consider all of the other policy drivers, including under the sustainable procurement duty in the 2014 act, that starts to shift the answer. Of course, that is the intention. If it did not shift the answer, the act would not be achieving what it set out to achieve. The professionalism of buyers is trying to balance off the competing, sometimes intention, desires that have to be delivered through the knot in the bow tie. On the other side of the bow tie, of course, is the supply market. It has lots of different suppliers with different offerings. However, if the 2014 act did not change the answer of the tender, it would not be achieving its aims. One of the things about all of this—I think that this is the nub—is that the 2014 act has made some good changes, and we can see that. However, there are certain aspects of that, and some of that is not about changes to legislation or regulation necessarily. Where we are at is that we have a number of organisations now that did not exist before. Scotland XL is huge now, compared with what it used to be. We have other organisations in this centre of excellence, but the frustrating thing for many—it comes back to my devil's advocate aspect of this—is that it is too weighted towards the lawyers and the accountants making decisions, or are we listening to all? The most frustrating thing of all is that there is good practice, and we know that there is good practice. That is actually good for human beings, as we have heard. Why is it that we are not exporting that good practice and ensuring that, in contracts and delivery for people, we are getting the best that we possibly can and giving the flexibility and autonomy that we have talked about before? The reality is—Graham, you said that it is often driven by budgets—that the reality is that getting that right for people in terms of whole-life costs could be saving us a lot of money, because crisis costs us a lot of money, as well as the human cost. How do we export that best practice? Julie, please. There are a number of things that we do, but there are things that we could do better. We have a Scotland Excel academy, and it provides training and support for all of our members and associates. We do procurement, business analysis, project management. We do all sorts of accredited and non-accredited training. What we do not currently have in our portfolio is anything around care commissioning. We are speaking to our colleagues in HSCPs at the moment about what we could develop to support them, to commission better and to ethically commission better. One example of that might be the work that has been done that you have mentioned around Granite Consortium. That is something that is in the pipeline. We recognise there is a gap, and we recognise that we could possibly help with that. What I would say in terms of our organisation, the Scottish Government set us up in response to the John McClellan report. We have been around for 16 years. We have not grown that dramatically. When we were first set up, we came from an organisation called ABC. It went down to 60, and it is back up to 100. It is still a small organisation by most standards. Any growth that we have had has been through councils coming to us saying that we would like you to do that for us because we are struggling to do it ourselves. The growth can be seen as both a negative and a positive depending on your perspective. I hope that that answers your question in terms of what we can do differently. How can we get that best practice exported, Graeme? I think that we do do it. I mentioned the 2006 McClellan report. At that point, there was a bit of a community of public sector procurers. The reform programme that kept in as a result of that report has built an incredibly well-connected community of procurement professionals. Best practice is shared routinely. We have heads of procurement meetings that are run several times a year by the Scottish Government. The community exists in sharing best practice as it pertains to procurement practice. It is standard now, and we have standard tools. We have the procurement journey. We have the supplier development programme to make that link between procurers and the marketplace. It does not mean that there is not more to do. There is always no question in my mind about that, but we share best practice. There is always room for local choice and local decisions. There will always be a variety of different ways of working within the rules and using the standard tools and so on. We work hard at it and we are good at it, but there is room for improvement, I think that there always is. Finally, in its statement more than a question convener, an appeal, is that folk go away and think about how front-line staff can be involved in helping to export that best practice, because I think that we are missing a trick. While I hear you saying that there is local autonomy and flexibility, lots of folk do not feel that that is the case anymore. If they are not feeling that way, we all have a part to play in looking at that. We will make some progress. Brian Whittle will be followed by Gordon MacDonald. Good morning to the panel. I am going to take a little bit of the themes that my co-league there and maybe run with it a bit. I think that there is tension between outcomes and cost. You will know that I have a specific interest around public food procurement and the impact that can have across so much of society. We would want to have the highest-quality food into our schools and hospitals. We possibly can. That was growing just down the road, because that will improve our kids' outcomes at schools. It will tackle much of our poor health issues that we currently have. It will tackle hunger, my nutrition and attainment and all of those things. In hospitals, it will help with recovery and the rural economy will benefit and reduce carbon output. It will also help with the long-comes budget and the impacts of that. I have been looking at your guys for quite a while, not from a critical perspective in terms of what you do but in terms of how we improve those outcomes. In 2016, I looked at that in a lot of depth. I was just quite surprised at how little food we procure in public comes from Scotland. Given where we want to be and the outcomes that we want to have, how much do we look long-term and how much of the pressure that is put on you is from local council budgets and their ability to pay for that service? Thank you for the question. I know that you are passionate about food procurement. We have put some dialogue between our organisation and ourselves. We are one of the biggest public sector food buyers in Scotland. The food contracts that we put in place are worth about £83 million a year, but we have been working really hard over the past probably 10 years to try and increase that Scottish produce that is bought, not just to help with all the areas that you have talked about, but we have also got the whole environmental footprint and all of that now, which is helpful too. I think that there are great examples of where we have made improvements and a couple of those are things like being able to massively increase the amount of Scottish meats that are purchased. It is now 77 per cent of the total that was a lot less before. Also, in terms of chicken, there is only one chicken product that is bought out with the UK now, and it used to be a lot higher. I know that it was a regular FOI that we got about buying Thai chicken, which everybody has probably heard of, but we only buy one product. 96 per cent of our chicken is far more assured than red tractor. We have been on a journey to try and increase that footprint of Scottish produce within our frameworks. That has worked really well, but we are trying to marry that up against an environment, as you rightly pointed out, where cost is challenging and budgets are being pressed quite a lot within local government. We have not been up to this point and asked to look at changing any of the good practice that we have, and we are delighted about that. However, we are being asked to look at whether we are buying the best Scottish cheese or the cheapest Scottish cheese across the country. Food is an area that we are constantly looking at. We do not want to lose any of the best practice. In fact, we want to increase where we are in buying Scottish produce. That will be our aim moving forward. Who would have thought out of that report that was chicken from Thailand and everybody would jump on? From the other perspective, looking at our food producers, they are not the best at dealing with the contracts that are required. Every single time I go to a farm and meet with the NFUS, they talk about struggling to get access to an Excel contract. In the scheme of things, they are small. How do we use the public procurement framework to try to bring them into the fold and make it easy for them to come into the fold? I will come over to you in a minute. We work closely with lots of the organisations that are in this whole food environment, the food market, including the oil association and others. We are really up for being more open to engage with any of the organisations that are approaching us and saying that we feel that this process is not working for us because we want it to work for them. One of the things that I should have mentioned in the past when we went out to the market tended to be the big suppliers that had the distribution networks in place. More recently, quite a lot of our lots are supply-only, so small suppliers have the opportunity to bid and use someone else's distribution network. That was something that we would have never done in the past. That was purely about trying to open it up to smaller Scottish suppliers and getting their foods in that supply chain. In answer to your question, I think that we do quite a lot. Food is a big part of what we procure, and it is a very closely managed part of what we procure, but we are up for doing more. If there is more engagement that we should have with the National Farmers Union, I think that you said. Other organisations, please point them in my direction. We will make sure that we have those conversations and make the changes that we can. There are a number of considerations that we can take into account when buying good and drink, but we would have an influence towards Scottish local produce. As I am sure all the members of the committee know, we cannot just specify Scottish and we cannot actively discriminate against suppliers who are not Scottish, but we can and do look at protected geographical indications. That is where we can go very local and are both smoky. If that is what we want to have, you can specify something like that. We can look at some of the standard assurance systems, such as Red Tractor, RSPCA and so on. We can look at organic and fresh, fresh and seasonal. We can break frameworks into geographical lots. We can have secondary price lists in frameworks to allow some of the products that might be more expensive, but they are still on there and anyone who chooses to buy a more expensive product can choose to do so. However, I would like to unpack on the Scottish Government catering contract. I will pick on Victoria Key down in Leith. When I was involved in re-tendering that contract some years ago, we looked at how the best way to involve SMEs. There are multiple constraints on both sides of the bow tie that I have described before. Many SMEs do not want to do small drops, so logistics do not work. They want to drop off a whole pallet of goods often. Victoria Key cannot take pallets of yogurts. They do not have the storage space to take an entire pallet full. That is where wholesalers come in. In terms of Scottish produce getting into the supply chain of wholesalers, that is where there is huge success. The Scottish Government contract has 50 per cent Scottish—the beef is 50 per cent Scottish—a 50 per cent red tractor for the rest of the UK. Fresh pork is 58 per cent Scottish. Lamb is 82 per cent. Chicken in Turkey is 100 per cent from the UK. Eggs are 68 per cent Scottish. I will not give you the full list, but it is hugely successful because it allows the SMEs to get that business, but it furthers their business. Once those SMEs are in the big sheds, those lorries are delivering on a full route that might include Victoria Key, but they are passing hotels and going to schools, for example, hospitals and so on. Once we get those products onto the shelves of the big sheds, it then opens up that wholesalers' customer base to that SME. It is a real win-win in the right circumstances to get into the supply chain, particularly where an SME does not want to do small drops. It can be very successful. There are regulations. One of the things that you should do is environmental impact, so you can procure on airmiles. I totally understand that, of the west coast of Scotland, there are not that many tunners yet. However, if you want to tune on the menu, you have to but there are instances where we hold up East Ayrshire. 75 per cent of the food that they procure for their schools is local. By local, predominantly Scotland, I think that the furthest I feel to do is that the fish comes out of Edinburgh, but they can tell you which farm the eggs came from. There are instances where that happens. It can be done. I also now know that they are under pressure financially to maintain that, and there is going to be a huge negative impact as we saw from the outcomes that we talked about earlier on. How can the Government procure contracts with the likes of Excel to weight more towards those outcomes? Specificially on airmiles, that is a very complicated one. It was looked at that the rules come from the World Trade Organization Government procurement agreement, and then, for a while, they were coming through the European directives into Scottish law. Right across the whole of Europe, there are examples where public bodies tried to use airmiles or, let's say, logistics miles as a proxy to try to achieve local produce. That is where you can go too far. If you are doing something purely to get that local answer, it is a step too far and you start to trip over trade deals, things like the UK Internal Market Act. We cannot go quite that far. We are achieving huge numbers in terms of the proportion of Scottish and local produce through the existing policies. Does everybody do that? Probably not. Certainly, the Scottish Government does. Scotland and Excel are saying that they do in all of their food and drink contracts. I know that it is true of the NHS in Scotland as well and the rest of the sector. I think that absolutely the side of the bull tie, the policies, the budget, all those things are always going to have an impact there as well. One more thing, just on carbon footprint. It can sometimes get the wrong answer. We have looked at that in some depth. There are some produce categories where, if we had just looked at carbon footprint, it would be better to source things from Spain than it would be to get them locally. Lettuces are growing under lights in heated conditions. It can be less carbon intensive to bring those lettuces from Spain than it is to buy locally. That is why we look at policies such as fresh and seasonal in order to not favour something that might be coming from very far away. If it is very brief, we are getting short of time. I would say that the French always managed to do that really, really well. The last thing is that, in our schools and hospitals, there is a distinct lack of ability to prepare food on site. How much does the orders for pre-prepared food against food that could be prepared on site impact what you would deliver? I do not know the answer to that question, but it is something that I can go away and have a look at. It is not something that has come up as being an issue, but do not forget that we have literally hundreds of schools, so some will be having this challenge and others will not, depending on the size. If the question is around have we increased pre-prepared food as opposed to making on site, that is something that I can go away and look at to see if those particular items have increased in volume. It might well be linked to the challenge that you have mentioned, but let me go away and look at that and come back to you. Thank you. Gordon Macdonald is followed by Pop Doris. Thank you very much, convener. Good morning, panel. I wanted to ask you about Public Contract Scotland website, and I believe that it falls within your remit, Graham. Colleagues of mine within Government, not in my team, but you are happy to answer. The evidence that we have heard over the past few weeks from suppliers and buyers is that, when it was first introduced back in 2008, it was very welcome. One point where they could find all the contracts. Obviously, 16 years later, it is looking a bit dated in comparison to other e-tendering systems. I am just wondering if you could maybe highlight what the plans are going forward in order to replace or upgrade that system. For my benefit, why is there two systems as in you have public procurement Scotland and you have the tendering system, which is separate? The system has been updated in the last 16 years. It is not a static thing, so it is constantly being updated. When I went to school, I went to a school that had the first purpose-built educational chemistry lab in the world. I think that it was certainly the first in Scotland. As a result, I learned in a Victorian chemistry lab. In some ways, we are a victim of our own leading edge approach. We were among the first to mandate a single advertising portal for the whole of the public sector, and that was in the 2014 act. It needs to be updated. Colleagues are currently scoping it, and they are scoping it with input from across the public sector and supplier market in Scotland. In terms of the multiple systems, I know that that is within the scope of the analysis to ask whether it is still the right answer or whether there is a better way to do that. The stage of the act just now is gathering the desires of everybody that uses the systems to figure out what is the best way forward. A victim of being leading edge is yet to end up with the old technology. What changes would you like to see? I hear from front-line users that they are—this is not just the advertising portal, but the whole suite of e-commerce systems. People are so familiar now with online shopping, and they understand how to use these portals and so on. Thinking to the central government sector and what I hear from them, there is certainly a desire to simplify the process of placing an order. Obviously, that is the far end of the procurement of contracts, and you come back into the tender system. From that end, going right back to the very early stages, I would like to see information getting drawn from one system to the other. That would benefit not just the buyers in my sector and all the other sectors, but it would also be far more efficient for the market to have to put their information into one system once and then have that pulled straight through. Administrator burdened a lot of suppliers, I feel we have. Make it much simpler for, frankly, everybody concerned. I know that that is one of the things that colleagues are looking at, to see how they can have the interoperability between all those different systems. I will open up to everybody else. Julie, do you have any views on how to improve it? I suppose that I would start by saying that we think that PCS has been a force for good and generally people like it. It only takes you 10 minutes to set up a supplier profile. It is that simple, where it gets a bit more complicated is PCS-T and then the functionality between the two. I suppose that what we would like to see is those two being merged. I think that is what the team at Government is looking at. That national repository of bidder information is something that we have been hoping for for a long time, not only for us but for our suppliers. The guys made his team spend a lot of our time checking insurances, checking lots of different documentation as it is up to date. To have all that stuff in one place would be hugely beneficial for us as buyers but also for suppliers who only need to do it once instead of numerous times. I will finish on that because of the time constraints. One of the improvements that has been has been the quick quotes system that was introduced, but there is a threshold of £50,000. Should that be reviewed and if so, to what level? The £50,000 threshold is stipulated within the 2014 act. It can be changed by a minister. It has not been changed since 2014 and I understand that colleagues are considering that as well, whether it is time to look at changing that threshold. I might just invite Gillianne Bibby to make a comment on the website because the paper that you gave us does talk about confusing for businesses to have the two, the PCS and the PCS-T. You commented that there should be a mandate to use PCS-T to advertise that would benefit small businesses. Do you want to comment a bit on that? We have already highlighted the fact that there are two different systems, but there are also different processes in the system. It is not just a matter of registering your profile and you have to go through certain steps to make sure that it is published. That is a big thing that we see from small businesses who think that they are registered on there. If they have not published their profile, the buyers cannot see them to invite them to a quick quote and that is actually quite a barrier to make sure that they do that. Time has come and I know that we have been asked to be involved in some of the points going forward about how to address it. You are right about the online shopping. People shop on Google so they do a simple search and it is not that easy to use PCS for a simple search. A small business is trying to find something that is equivalent to what they offer and it is difficult for them to do. There is a lot of work that can be done easily to address some of the concerns that are in there. Going forward, there is also the ability to look at the single sign-on and the single place of deposit of accreditation. That is something that would be very welcome from the supplier community, is that they do it once. There are bits of it that you can do that but I think that there is more we can go around to do that. Are you supportive of changing to the thresholds as well? I think that would be a good idea. The cost of living and everything that is moved, I think it would. You have got to think back to how that works out because very small tenders, the councils set their own standing orders so they might still just go out and do a three quotes or in your big telephone inquiries. When it starts to step up to the 10,000 and the other mark, then they will start to use the system for quick quotes. That would be welcome to do that. Listening keenly to the success in improving the amount of Scottish suppliers that has been in recent years, I suppose that all suppliers, businesses and third sector reps have noted that unsuccessful bidders are not part of that 60 per cent. I suppose that they do not always get feedback or meaningful feedback. That can particularly discourage small firms from engaging in the future procurement processes. How effective is current feedback procedures and what barriers exist to providing more successful feedback more often? I am not sure which of our witnesses would want to address that question. There is a straightforward and binding requirement to give feedback. There are thresholds that apply to the levels of feedback, or rather, when you give feedback, let's say. The Procurements that are regulated by the 2014 act, the buying authority has to inform the unsuccessful bidders who won and what their score was. They then have to respond to a request for further detail. Is that part that might leave some bidders thinking that they have not received enough information? Perhaps they do not realise that, within that slice of regulated procurements, there is the step where you go back in and seek further feedback. The procurements that are regulated by the regulations rather than by the 2014 act, the feedback has to be in the standstill letter, it has to be up front, and there is no need to request very detailed feedback. There are those distinctions. I wonder if that is why some bidders think that they are not getting what they are entitled to. I must say that I do not recognise the lack of detailed feedback on where I have seen procurement exercises and where I have seen that we do a kind of comparison. Every year, we go and look at members of the central government sector to see how well they are adhering to procurement practice and so on. I do not recognise the lack of feedback, but that is not to say clearly that it is happening. I would like to understand more about where it is coming from. I am sure that some of the committee, perhaps with Spice, can get that information to you, given the analysis that has been done. I do a couple of follow-up questions, but I know Gillian Cameron wants to come in. I think that probably what you are hearing from is a lot of the smaller and micro-businesses where it is below the regulated thresholds and where it is maybe not so consistent, and they might just be told that they have not won the contract. I am absolutely right what Graham Graham says. Again, it is some learning and education for Spice to know that they can go back and ask that question and say why I was unsuccessful. They do not often know that. I think that the pressures on procurement staff at the moment and the resources within councils and other public bodies may not be done particularly quickly as well, so they might feel that they have not had that answer. I think that is some of the challenges about why they feel that they may have not had it, or that they may have just had a very cheap enough. It comes down to the lower level that price is a huge factor, so maybe you were not as cheap as some of the other organisations out there. Potentially a human resource issue there, but just for clarity, this is not a follow-up question, but for clarity, what is the threshold that you are referring to, Ms Cameron? So, when contracts have to be advertised on Public Contract Scotland, they are over £50,000 for goods and services and over £4 million, is that right for works? That is helpful. Of course, the way that small businesses grow is that they are successful in winning some of those smaller awards that they are not currently entitled to get feedback on, which might be just because of the threshold, because you have to pick a draw line somewhere or it could be a human resource issue, but can I ask what the outcomes are? Does any of the Government or Scotland's elderly map the attrition rate or the reapplication rate for the smaller businesses who say apply in one financial year but the next two or three years they do not apply? They have never gone in contact before? Or maybe they do reapply because if the reason for feedback is to encourage businesses, particularly ones that are based in Scotland, to reapply how do we map that? How successful is the feedback to get that reapplication? Tracking of bidding is always above that higher threshold, so we are always above the regulated threshold rather than these lower value contracts, so my comments would be in that area. What we have seen over the last 10 years or so is an increase in the variety of bidders, the size of bidders has diversified over that period of time. We have more smaller businesses than we previously had. In each individual tender we do assess the comparison of the numbers of bids compared to the last time we ran that tender exercise for similar groups of products, but we do not then reach out to those that did not bid necessarily to ask them. If they came to us, as you said, if they come and asked for feedback, we would always give it. I am not trying to imply a criticism, it may just be a gap, so there are businesses out there if they are below £50,000 or below £4 million, there is no formal structure feedback process. That is just a fact. I am not reading anything into that, that is a fact, there are reasons for that. Has any effort been made to maybe whether if they cannot be given individual feedback, whether they can collect, to be brought together in clusters 15, 20 and support given to them more generally, a bit encouraging? We want these smaller businesses to feel encouraged to do what they have been disillusioned when that has twice now applied. I did not apply what is the point in doing it in the future, they will not grow, they will not innovate, they will not learn from that. What support is out there for them, I suppose I would ask? I think to ourselves, the Spire Development Programme, that is key to what we deliver on, is not only on how to bid and how to tender, but also how to deal when you have not won a contract and give them that information and support so that they can go back there. Going back to the local authorities, I always advise the Spires even that they want a contract to ask why they have won on this occasion, so they can see if there is a differentiate or why they won this time. I think that it is hugely important that they get feedback, because, as you say, how else can they prove to move forward on this? I think that there is more transparency and openness of that happening now, but there are still ways to go on it. There is maybe just a wee gap there somewhere where we could do a wee bit more. I am your passenger through this committee, I am substituting today, but I feel that particular interest, whether there is something that we could address there. Can I just say one other thing? We go back to Public Contract Scotland, because within Public Contract Scotland, suppliers can see why they are not bidding for a contract. None of that information is made, certainly public or otherwise. I do not know if it is even collated, but I think that that would be interesting information to understand why businesses go on, apply for the tender and look at the documents to say that is not for me. We do not have that overall visibility of saying, well, what was the common factor, was it maybe timing, which is a huge thing for small businesses, because they only see it at the last minute, so they then do not have time to prepare the tender. Is it the budget that is on there? So there is a whole other aspect about why they might even get past that gateway to think about bidding and then not do it. I am really sorry, but does that get followed up on, let me give you a very direct example, whether that does get followed up in the Scottish public sector social security Scotland. Someone who applies for a job for social security Scotland is mostly online, but if they go part of me through the process and do not submit their application, they have a backchannel bug, which, as long as they are given some form of contact, they reach out to the individual and they say, well, we see, you are thinking about applying to social security Scotland, but you did not complete the application. Is there any way we can support you to do so? Is there any follow-up when that final bid does not come in, but you know that they were considering it in the first place? Not that I am aware of, but again, timing would probably pay a key part in that, to be honest with you. Okay, thank you. Before we close, I am just going to ask Gillian in the paper you provided for us. You also talked about insufficient lotting of contracts and some of the issues you identified there, again, is about transparency and reasons why contracts—do you want to tell me a bit about that? I think there has been a lot of improvement around that, certainly, and my colleagues at the table are looking at it, but when I look from a very local perspective where community wealth building is driving the use of local suppliers and the desire to have local suppliers on those frameworks, particularly for smaller businesses, it may be that the lots are still too big for them, not on all occasions, on some occasions. It may be lotting in a different way, it may not be geographical, it may be more down to the sector and the actual service that is part of it, so I think that that is some of the challenges. Certainly, we deliver a course that we talk about frameworks and how to get on them, and certainly Scotland-Cell do come along and talk about their services on that as well. I think that there are ways to look at how we move forward with that. I know that my colleagues are definitely looking at how they might improve that, but Scotland-Cell are not the only framework organisation out there. There are lots of different framework organisations out there that run frameworks. I suppose that when it comes back to, they are there to support a majority of buyers, so I would imagine that it is a very difficult task to try and make sure that that framework fits all to be able to do that. I think that there are other ways as well where it is not lotted that is so friendly to be geographical or for smaller businesses. How do we really encourage those that win it to be open to engage with local businesses to then get part of the supply chain on there? Okay, thank you. I think that that is our evidence session finished for this morning. Thank you very much for the witnesses for attending. I will briefly suspend before we move to our next item of business to enable the witnesses to leave. Our next item of business this morning is consideration of a negative instrument. It is the Bankruptcy Scotland amendment regulations 2020-24. As it is a negative instrument, members are invited to note the instrument. Thank you. We will now move into private session for the remaining items on the agenda.