Public Procurement Policy

Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Finance and Trefnydd – in the Senedd at 2:04 pm on 3 April 2019.

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Photo of Rebecca Evans Rebecca Evans Labour 2:04, 3 April 2019

In terms of the NPS, I would certainly refer you to the review that was undertaken of the NPS, which set out what our stakeholders told us they felt wasn't working as well as it could through the approach, and they were things such as not taking a sufficiently strong regional approach or not taking a sufficiently strong local approach to it. So, I think in terms of the most important thing, really, being moving forward from here, work is ongoing now in terms of the future delivery strategy. That work is well under way, as I say. We're sharing a draft with stakeholders by early summer of 2019, and I'd be more than happy to offer colleagues across the Chamber the opportunity to have a briefing session with officials and the opportunity to feed into that strategy, because I know that there's a great deal of interest in public procurement across the Assembly. The initial draft, as I say, should be ready by the end of the month, by which point we would start to go out to discuss it with stakeholders.

We're further refining some of the milestones that we would want, to take account of the feedback that we've already had from the Welsh Local Government Association and NHS Wales. That draft strategy will be the basis for undertaking some further consultation on a new way forward. We'll also be using events such as Procurex as a means of raising awareness of the work, and engaging with as wide a range of stakeholders as possible. But I'm absolutely clear that the way in which we move forward with this agenda has to be very much co-produced with those people who'll be using the service and benefiting from the service.