Chamber and committees

I presume that that is the case for the other witnesses, too.

Melanie Mackenzie indicated agreement.

Lynette Robertson indicated agreement.

I have a final question about resources. Craig Fergusson has already touched on the resource challenge that you would have when going beyond primary contractors. You are having to make millions of pounds of savings every year. Has there been a drive to use procurement as part of those savings? Are local authorities absolutely pushing procurement as a way to save money? If so, that is, I presume, in tension with buying fair trade goods. Is that fair to say?

That line has been used in my local authority. People have said, “You can get the paper clips in the shop round the corner, so why are you ordering them from there?”

Scotland is a fair trade nation, and public procurement is an important part of that. A few years ago, the Scottish Fair Trade Forum did a piece of work that involved making freedom of information requests to find out how much public bodies were spending on fair trade products. To say that there was a mixed bag would be an understatement. I do not think that Scottish Water spent anything on that. It might well be that it does not monitor that or capture that information, but Scottish Water certainly said that it had no expenditure on fair trade products. The expenditure by colleges and universities varied. The University of Edinburgh had done some innovative work on using fair trade graduation gowns and it had a specific contract for that, but others said that they did not spend anything. Again, it probably comes down to how such expenditure is monitored. The NHS varied from board to board. There were some big figures in some areas but very little was spent in others.

Is fair trade on your agenda with regard to the procurement of products? What do you do about it?

I suppose that there is no requirement to publish the figures on fair trade procurement, despite Scotland being a fair trade nation.

Does Lynette Robertson or Craig Fergusson want to add anything to that?

If there was specific guidance from the Scottish Government that provided a definition of fair trade within procurement and, each year, as part of your annual report, you had to publish the level of fair trade spend based on that definition, could you do that with a change in the way in which you monitor it?

Stephen, I imagine that building that for dozens of individual colleges and universities would be quite a challenge for you. I am keen to hear how colleges and universities monitor that across the board. I am also intrigued by something that you said about the tension between best value and other requirements of the 2014 act. In your submission, you say:

“Potentially the requirement to consider wider policy issues is also leading to the stifling of best value and innovation. Contracting Authorities can be so focussed on including all aspects of policy (fair work, environment etc) that it becomes a box ticking exercise and dissuades smaller companies from bidding.”

I am keen for you to expand on the challenges around that tension.

Do you measure the value of that in your overall procurement?

That would be helpful—thank you.