5. What progress is being made by the Welsh Government on the review of the national procurement service? OAQ53584

I thank the Member for that. Since a written statement on the review was issued in September, work has focused on reducing the number of national procurement programmes and developing pilot action to expand procurement activity at local and regional levels.

I thank you for that answer, First Minister. I know that, last week, Nick Ramsay raised the same question with the finance Minister in her questions, and many of the answers came back that reducing the number to be more regional but also community benefits would help. For example, there's a £100 million project in my constituency in which the community benefit was the employment of local people. Six people we employed in security roles—not sustainable, not an improvement to the economy. The way to improve the economy is to ensure that businesses locally have access to gaining those contracts in the first place. Mike Hedges has often raised the concept of smaller contracts, split down, easier—that's one way. But if you're going to review the National Procurement Service and it's going to be the leading type of approach to procurement, will you ensure that it's spread across the public sector to ensure that all public sector organisations follow your example of improving community benefit to ensure they're long term and sustainable, to ensure that those contracts are available to local businesses, where the real money comes in for the local economy in those businesses being maintained? And will you also look at frameworks, because many of our local businesses are being excluded because of the frameworks? So, it's a whole package that needs to be looked at, and will you therefore do that once you've done the review of the NPS?

I certainly agree with the Member that it's a package of measures that we have to put together to ensure that we get maximum public value from the spending of public money, and there are some very good examples of community benefits. The one the Member cited does not sound like one of those, but we've now had more than £2 billion-worth of projects in which community benefits have been secured—that's over 500 projects, that's 2,500 jobs and over 1,000 apprenticeships that have been secured through the community-benefit approach. And ensuring that we do more of that and we do better is part of the procurement review.

Quite certainly, our ambition is that contracts are let in ways that maximise the opportunity for indigenous suppliers, and we try to do that in the way that David Rees suggested, by linking together different aspects of our procurement activity. So he will, I know, be a strong supporter of the work that we have done to produce a procurement advice note in relation to steel procurement to make sure that, when public money is being spent in the twenty-first century schools programme, for example, where Welsh steel can be supplied or UK steel can be supplied, we maximise that in the way that procurement is carried out here in Wales. Indigenous contractors already secure 80 per cent of contracts valued in excess of £750,000 that are awarded here in Wales, and that figure has grown significantly in recent times. There's more to do. The circumstances that we face, if we are to leave the European Union, are part of that, and it's part of the way that that review is being conducted.

First Minister, I'm most probably one of the last people who calls for legislation in certain areas, but in this particular area the French Government have taken the lead with the French agricultural Bill that has recently been enacted about public procurement and the use of public procurement to drive localised economies. I'd implore your Government to look at the example they've set, because, very often, we are cited—and we'll hopefully be leaving the European Union, but very often we are told that by our membership to the European Union we can't use certain instruments to drive public procurement as an energiser of the local economy. Well, in France, they've managed to do that with the agricultural Bill with minimum levels of public procurement and also safeguarding localised produce. I do believe that those avenues will be open to your Government and the Minister will, I understand it, be putting forward an agricultural Bill and I think that would be a perfect vehicle to drive this agenda forward.

Well, Llywydd, of course, we're very happy to look at that example. It fits very much with the work that my colleague Lesley Griffiths is doing and in the foundational economy where Lee Waters made a statement to the Assembly very recently. Of course, the example does pinpoint the argument that the Member was making. We are told that we have to leave the European Union in order to gain these freedoms, and yet the example he points to is of a country in the European Union and intending to remain in the European Union and is still able—

You cite it.

—to obtain the benefits that the Member pointed to. So, where there are examples of how we can better use existing freedoms and stretch the rules so that they are to the benefit of local economies, I agree that we should do that. We don't need to leave the European Union in order to be able to achieve it.