6. What plans does the Welsh Government have to use public procurement to strengthen local businesses? OAQ54039

Llywydd, Welsh suppliers now win 52 per cent of the annual £6.2 billion-worth of procurement expenditure in Wales, up from 35 per cent in 2004. We aim to increase this further through the procurement action plan for Wales, which includes new supply chain interventions to increase opportunities for Welsh businesses. 

Thank you very much, First Minister. Obviously, the declaration of a climate emergency means we have to reduce our carbon emissions in everything we do, and that, of course, includes reducing food miles. When we are aware that the front runner for the Tory party leadership seems determined to take us out of the European Union with or without a deal on appropriately named Halloween day, when we celebrate the dark arts, that will of course hugely disrupt all our food supplies, including raising the prices of any vegetables and fruit that we import. So, I wondered what plans the Welsh Government has to stimulate an increase in horticultural production in Wales, so that we can supply our schools, our hospitals and our residential homes with fresh local produce.

I thank Jenny Rathbone for that, Llywydd. I was in Aberystwyth yesterday in the IBERS building to address a meeting of the Farmers Union of Wales. It was a very good place to do that, because of the long and successful history of plant breeding at the institute and the way in which that can support local food production. I heard a lot of both interesting and encouraging ideas that are being developed there as part of any future mid Wales growth deal, to make local food production central to the way in which that deal will be developed using that expertise. When I spoke to the AGM of the FUW they were absolutely seized of the points that Jenny Rathbone has just made, very anxious about the prospects for their industry of leaving the European Union without a deal, fearful of what that will mean for agriculture here in Wales, but interested, definitely, in new possibilities in horticulture. Horticulture is a small but key part of agricultural production here in Wales, and through 'Brexit and our land', which is what I was there to talk to farmers about, I hope that we will, working closely with them, be able to demonstrate that there is a successful future for sustainable farming here in Wales in which sustainable food production and the delivery of public goods go hand in hand, and where new opportunities in horticulture, for exactly the reasons that Jenny Rathbone has outlined, become more available to farming communities in Wales, so that local production of food for local consumption, avoiding food miles, assisting with the impact of Brexit, providing reliable income streams to farmers—all of those things come together in our plan. I was very glad of a chance to explore that with practitioners in the farming world yesterday, and I think that we have a set of ingredients here in Wales that will be successful both in the farming field, but also in the environmental issues to which Jenny Rathbone referred.

Of course, the Welsh Government is a major procurer throughout the whole of Wales, and indeed the organisations that are responsible to the Welsh Government, and so you have a huge amount of influence. You mentioned earlier supply chain interventions; are you able to, or do you, indeed, issue guidance that gives a weighting to organisations so that they can actually give more marks towards, for example, a company that is local, and thereby help to contribute towards a reduction in our climate costs rather than just, say, always going for the cheapest? Because sometimes a slightly more expensive company that's just down the road would be of much greater benefit to the local economy, to the Government and to Wales as a whole.

I thank Angela Burns for those points. Of course, there is guidance issued to procurement services here in Wales. They have to operate within the wider rulebook that the United Kingdom and the European Union operate within, but the purpose of that guidance is to focus the minds of those people who carry out procurement on best value rather than lowest cost in the way that they award contracts. The considerations that Angela Burns has just outlined about impacts in local economies, on employment in those places, in the avoidance of environmental damage through food miles and so on—all of those are legitimate considerations that smart procuring takes into account when it is focused on getting the best value out of public spend, and not just simply the cheapest price.