Part of 1. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Finance – in the Senedd at 2:04 pm on 18 April 2018.
Well, can I begin by recognising the point that the Member makes? The need for proper capacity and capability in procurement is a challenge. I talked to Kevin Morgan myself about it, and the Member was right that the McClelland methodology does suggest a deficit in Wales of the order that he identified. Now, we've already done some things about this in Wales. We've had the Home Grown Talent project, which has successfully brought new people into the system. We are committed to increasing the pool of procurement professionals in Wales. We're working with schools and colleges to raise the awareness of procurement as a desirable profession. But we also need to work with public sector organisations for them to give the sense of status and recognition to procurement professionals that they do to others. Too often, it seems to me, public organisations regard procurement as a rather handle-turning exercise, where you don't think of the people involved in it as having much of a cutting-edge contribution to the work of the organisation. But we know— some of the points Adam Price has already made—about the ability of procurement to drive value for the public, and not just value, but activity in terms of employment and community benefits and so on. The status of the profession needs to be recognised better, and that's part of the work that we want to do to try to address the recruitment and retention issues that Adam Price has identified.