Diolch. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I move the motion in my name. We issued this report in February, however the Government's response was understandably delayed due to the pandemic, and we received this in July. Our inquiry focused on how the Welsh Government would fulfil its long-term commitments to increase local procurement as part of the drive to create stronger local supply chains and build wealth in communities across Wales. Our recommendations contained a large number of questions, because we found that the Government had no published strategy and no clear position on its definition of local procurement.

When giving evidence, the Deputy Minister was unapologetic about taking an experimental approach and not yet having all the answers. The committee was pointed towards the success of the Better Jobs Closer to Home pilot in the Valleys, but against the scale of current unemployment projections, the number of jobs created is relatively small. As the Welsh Government tries to build back better, the scaling up of job creation across Wales I think will be vital.

Our first recommendation asked for clarity on how Ministers would define success, what their concrete plans were and where they intended to focus most effort. The later recommendations asked about the how. For example, how will the Welsh Government monitor the work of public services boards to drive the economic benefits of local procurement? How will it answer the concerns of small businesses that they still can't access overly complex procurement processes? How will greater collaboration on joint bids be supported and incentivised? How can engagement with supply chains be improved? How will the Welsh Government monitor and measure success and collect and share data? And how will best practice be shared and scaled up, something that hasn't been possible to achieve, it seems, in 20 years of devolution?

Much of the Government's response is encouraging. In March the Government's direction of travel was set out in a National Procurement Service report called 'Progress towards the development of a new procurement landscape in Wales', and it's clear that work is progressing, including commissioning the Centre for Local Economic Strategies, or CLES in short, to work with public services boards to improve the understanding of local value of procurement activity and refine their definition of local procurement. I think it is high time that analysing procurement spend went beyond the traditional postcode classification of just counting invoices of companies listed at a Welsh address. And I hope that, in responding to this debate today, the Government can say more about when we'll see measurable, positive outcomes from the work with public services boards.

The current phase of work is set to run beyond this fifth Assembly, with a mid-term review due in April 2021, so it will fall to Members of the sixth Senedd to monitor long-term success. This is a long game. In the foreword in our report I said that our predecessor committee back in 2012 had called on Welsh Government to take specific actions to boost the benefits of public procurement for the Welsh economy, and despite those actions, we still see the same thorny and ingrained problems eight years later. There are still cultural attitudes to risk management in the public sector that work against innovation and change. There is a persistent lack of skills capacity and failure to have early and sustained engagement with local supply chains.

Experts from academia and the private sector told us that the answers are already in Wales. Our inquiry identifies some excellent procurement practices in the housing sector, but good practice is just not translating across to other sectors of the economy. Now more than ever, public money needs to circulate in Wales around the economy rather than leaking out, to create apprenticeships and jobs and community wealth and other community benefits, and to feed into local supply chains. Professor Karel Williams said that effort should focus on key strategic sectors with potential for the most positive impact from local procurement decisions, sectors like care, construction and food. However, the Government says it's still pursuing a sector-neutral approach, and that any sector focus will be decided by analysing historical procurement spend and up-and-coming contracts, taken forward in collaboration with stakeholders. Obviously, data should inform decision making, but how confident are Ministers that a more broad-brush and hands-off approach will yield results?

Stronger engagement with the private sector is also needed. The Federation of Small Businesses Wales proposed that Welsh Government should broaden its engagement with anchor institutions, to include larger private sector companies. The Government says that this is happening and that its approach to anchors is still evolving. A factor in the success of the Preston model of procurement was said to be the signing of statements of intent with local procurement sector anchor institutions, but the Government's response suggests that public services boards are still some way from being ready to sign up to any such agreements.

We find a mixed picture in how public services boards are engaging with the goal of maximising local spend, and the future generations commissioner was actually quite negative about the extent to which future generations legislation is informing procurement decisions. So, the work of public services boards and the development of a community of practice are welcomed, and as this is a continued investment in people and skills, and a concerted effort to try to change the culture within public procurement, hopefully these latest initiatives will finally start to bear some fruit. I look forward to hearing Members' contributions and the Minister's reply, and my very short conclusion at the end, Deputy Presiding Officer.