Chamber and committees

Item 5 is consideration of a legislative consent memorandum?on the United Kingdom Procurement Bill. This is a UK Government bill that was introduced in the House of Lords on 11 May 2022, which changes the law on devolved matters. I welcome again Ivan McKee, Minister for Business, Trade, Tourism and Enterprise, who is joined by Julie Bain, a lawyer with the Scottish Government, and Alasdair Hamilton, procurement policy portfolio manager with the Scottish Government.

I invite the minister to make a brief statement before questions from members.

If there are no other questions, that brings us to the end of the evidence session, and I thank the minister and his officials for joining us this morning to consider this LCM and the other LCMs that we have discussed.

I now propose a slight change to the agenda. If members agree, we will move into private session for agenda item 8 before we resume the meeting to hear from our final panel of witnesses. Are members happy to do that?

Members indicated agreement.

We therefore move into private session.

Thank you. I am going to move over to members. I remind members that it would be helpful if they direct the question to the member of the panel they wish to hear from. You do not have to invite all members to speak if you do not wish to—I am thinking about the time for the meeting.

The STA’s submission mentions a survey, and you say that you are

“gravely concerned that some businesses might never reopen again”.

Is there a higher risk of that happening this year than there was last year?

I will come to Leon Thompson. Marc Crothall has outlined some of the key issues that the committee wants to explore, First, however, it would be helpful if you could reflect on where we are this year compared with last year.

Good morning, and welcome to the 22nd meeting in 2022 of the Economy and Fair Work Committee. Under agenda item 1, I ask whether members are content to take items 8 and 9 in private.

Members indicated agreement.

What does it change?

I am sorry for interrupting, minister, but the committee’s focus this morning is on scrutinising the LCM. I appreciate that there are broader issues that you wish to highlight, but I think that the committee is fairly familiar with the political discussion around this.

Thank you. That brings us to the end of the session. I thank our witnesses very much for sharing their experience and expertise with us this morning.

We will now move into private session for the remaining item on the agenda.