The creation of a tripartite social partnership council is at the heart of this legislation. Section 5(2) states that the First Minister must seek nominations for worker representatives from the Wales TUC. You perhaps won't be surprised to know that the Wales TUC and its affiliates supported this process for nominating worker representatives to the council, however unions not affiliated to the Wales TUC and others held different views. Both the Royal College of Nursing and the British Medical Association argued strongly for the Bill to be amended, and the RCN told us that the Bill as drafted could lead to non-TUC-affiliated unions being left out of social partnership in Wales and reduce their ability to co-operate and collaborate. As we spend half the Welsh Government budget on our health service, and this sector has a high concentration of non-affiliated unions, that anxiety was a key concern of the committee. So, I'm hoping that recommendation 7, calling for an amendment to the Bill to place a requirement on the Wales TUC to nominate a certain proportion of non-affiliated union members to the social partnership council will go forward.

The approach to public procurement envisaged by this Bill should keep more money in circulation locally, thus helping to build more resilient communities and more vibrant foundational economies. To be truly bold, however, we want to see measurable targets set for procurement, including the proportion of public money spent in Wales. Otherwise, we can't see whether this Bill has had the impact that we hope it will. So, recommendation 15 sets out the committee's view that the Bill should be amended to place a requirement on Ministers to set targets for public procurement. It recognises also that data gathering and the mechanisms needed to underpin effective targets may need time to work through, and recommends therefore that a medium-term time frame of three years should be appropriate to achieve this. 

I think many environmental organisations will be disappointed at the Minister's rejection of our recommendation 12, which would ensure that public bodies are not contributing to the destruction of rainforests. I appreciate that public bodies under the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 must accept their global responsibilities, but I think it would be difficult to expect that at the moment we are not importing stuff that has been created from tearing down rainforests and generally causing more global warming.

When we're implementing the Act, we must see the links that it has with the Welsh Government's broader policy objectives, particularly the transition to net zero. From the response to the energy and food crises to the reform of agriculture and sustainable land management, this Bill has the potential to provide a framework for action and collaboration across public bodies. 

In order to realise the Bill's ambitions, the Welsh Government will have to work with public bodies, industry and others to build capacity, capability and cultural change. The committee heard concerns that many public bodies face difficulties in recruiting procurement staff, hollowed out by years of austerity, and getting hold of such individuals was described as being like hen's teeth. This can lead to serious capacity problems and inconsistencies in approaches across public bodies.

This Bill creates a centre of excellence for procurement, but its role and the role of the social partnership council's procurement sub-committee need clarification. In particular, the Welsh Government needs to set out how it intends to ensure that the centre of excellence and the procurement sub-group will drive collaboration and change. There is also an issue about whether further education institutions, higher education institutions and registered social landlords should be required to follow Welsh Government procurement legislation in the same way as public sector contracting authorities, but I fully accept that we cannot be risking undermining the charitable status of some of these bodies and their important independence. But, nevertheless, I think it's very important that the Welsh Government and the Deputy Minister have accepted recommendation 13. I very much welcome that.

In terms of the guidance, we very much heard from stakeholders who work in the industry about the importance of good guidance playing a pivotal role in implementation, and I know that the Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee has also made a similar recommendation to ours. So, it would be useful to understand the detail of exactly how the Deputy Minister intends to grasp the spirit of those amendments, but not necessarily to set it in legislation. Otherwise, I very much look forward to Stage 2 of the Bill and to seeing how the Deputy Minister intends to strengthen the Bill in its detailed recommendations.