Chamber and committees

What is the reason for the lack of use of reserved contracts? Is that simply because they have not been talked about? Procurement has a lot of stuff built into it and around it, so there is some work—

Good morning to you both. Thank you for joining us and for what you have said so far.

I want to explore some of the equalities issues that Lindsey Millen mentioned earlier. Lindsey, you said in response to a previous question that there is a distinction between using procurement, or the mechanisms that procurement enables, for tackling or addressing gender inequalities compared to equalities more generally. Will you unpack that a bit more? Are any of the mechanisms ever in conflict with each other in looking at different groups that we might want to be focused on?

Good morning, and thank you for what you have contributed so far.

I want to explore conditionality a little bit further. At the beginning, in response to some of the convener’s questions, you spoke about the disability employment gap and what more we can do in the procurement space, on that. There was also a conversation about outcomes and the balance between price, social good and impact. In making procurement work for people, how can we deal with other equalities issues? That ties back into the issue of community wealth building, as well as more general community resilience.

Pauline, do you want to kick off? Gender is one element of that, but it is not the only one.

I am thinking not only about the disability employment gap—there are other protected characteristics and other equalities issues. Are there other elements that we should be thinking about? What other mechanisms could we use in procurement to enhance gender equality in the workplace or to draw people into a sector who would not traditionally work in that environment? Are there ways in which we should use procurement to do that?

That is helpful. Thank you.

You said that you do not often see equalities issues being talked about in procuring, and perhaps we can follow up on that in different ways.

My final question is for Martin Rhodes. This is kind of looking through the other end of the telescope from the question that Murdo Fraser asked about local economies and building and sustaining local resilience. We talk about the sustainable procurement duty, but is there enough understanding or awareness of the value of things such as fair trade? We want Scotland to be a socially and environmentally responsible nation that thinks about our impact globally, but do the guidelines and regulations allow enough of those narratives to come in? Are we thinking about those things?

It is almost as if our weighting system is far too simplistic to be manageable.

Thank you.

When it comes to the mechanism that could be used for that, do you think that the proportions that are given to certain criteria in the sustainable procurement duty would be the most effective way of enhancing the value that is given to sustainable procurement?

If we are doing procurement right, those examples should not exist, should they?