3. Statement by the Minister for Finance and Local Government: Procurement Update

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:18 pm on 25 January 2022.

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Photo of Rebecca Evans Rebecca Evans Labour 3:18, 25 January 2022

Yes, thank you for raising that question, and, absolutely, I've talked about the importance of capacity and capability within the procurement sector, but there is a great deal to do in terms of ensuring that people have the opportunity to find employment within our public sector. One of the things that I'm quite excited about is our personal learning accounts. So, we introduced these about 18 months ago, and it's part of our piloting work for the gender budgeting approach that we have here in Wales, but I think it's quite exciting now that we're expanding that to other areas too. The personal learning accounts are really there to support people who are potentially in employment at the moment, but who want to move up the ladder in their field of employment, or to potentially retrain to do something else. And I think there are big opportunities for that to be used within the public sector to ensure that people are able to access the roles that are for them. 

I'll give some further thought to the contribution, then, and potentially explore it with some of my other colleagues, because we do have a ministerial group that looks at procurement, and that's there to have those cross-Government discussions to ensure that we're all considering opportunities for joined-up approaches to procurement so that we can learn from each other and identify common challenges across Government. I think that the point you make about skills and capacity is one of those common challenges, so I'll be sure to have that as an item on our next agenda. Thank you.