Introduction
1. During the last months of the 2001 Parliament,
the Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) conducted a short inquiry
into how the Government was bringing the principles of sustainable
development (SD) to bear upon its procurement policy and advice.
The Committee agreed a short Report on this subject, just a few
weeks prior to the 2005 General Election, and expressed the hope
that its successor Committee would return to the subject of sustainable
procurement early in the new Parliament, to take advantage of
the work that it knew the National Audit Office (NAO) was at that
time undertaking in this area.[1]
2. The new Environmental Audit Committee met for
the first time on 14 July 2005. At that meeting, we decided to
launch a short follow-up inquiry on sustainable procurement.
The purpose of this inquiry was to ascertain what progress had
been made since the predecessor Committee's Report of April 2005,
to take advantage of the analysis and assessment contained within
the NAO's review of sustainable procurement—which was due
to be published in September 2005—and to help inform the
work of the Sustainable Procurement Task Force (SPTF), which was
set up very shortly after the April 2005 EAC report and which
was due to report to the Government with an Action Plan by April
2006.
3. We launched our inquiry on 1 September 2005, the
day that the NAO issued its Review, Sustainable procurement
in central government. We received 14 memoranda from, amongst
others, the Environment Agency (EA) and the Sustainable Development
Commission (SDC). We also took oral evidence from the Office of
Government Commerce (OGC), the agency which, under Her Majesty's
Treasury (HMT), oversees and advises upon government procurement
policy, and from Elliot Morley MP, an ex officio member
of EAC and Minister of State at the Department for Environment,
Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA). We are grateful to all those
who submitted evidence or appeared before us. We are particularly
grateful to the NAO for its excellent Review which provided us
with an up-to-date and comprehensive assessment of the situation
when the inquiry was launched.
4. While undertaking this short inquiry we were of
course mindful of the work being carried out by the SPTF. The
Task Force has an enormous amount of work to rationalise and sum
up in its soon-expected Action Plan This Plan will hopefully give
greater momentum, clarity and focus to this area of government
activity, qualities which it has by and large lacked despite the
work of Elliot Morley and DEFRA to engage the rest of Government,
and OGC in particular, in this agenda. Procurement ranges from
the purchase of paper-clips through to buildings and IT systems,
and many small-scale procurers often feel under-empowered to purchase
more sustainably while large-scale procurers often have their
attention drawn away from SD and environmental issues by other
pressing concerns—notably deadlines and cost. Approximately
£125 billion is spent each year on procurement within the
public sector[2]
of which £15 billion is spent directly by central government
departments and their executive agencies[3]—this
is money which, if spent sustainably, could transform markets
and business in an innovative and environmentally sound way.
The repercussions of such sums spent unsustainably are obvious.
We look forward to the Task
Force's Action Plan and hope that it sets out directly and clearly
exactly how the Government—and
the public sector at large—may
transform sustainable procurement from an opportunity to an achievement.
1 Environmental Audit Committee, Sixth Report of Session
2004-05, Sustainable Public Procurement, HC 266 Back
2
Q6 Back
3
National Audit Office review, Sustainable procurement in central
government, September 2005: executive summary, para. 1 Back
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