The Countryside Alliance has responded to a government consultation on updating the rules for public procurement. Although it concerned contracts for all goods and services, this was another opportunity for us to press the case for supporting Britain’s food and farming sector through public sector spending.
The consultation document includes a tantalising segment about a plan to give ministers the power to designate specific sectors as critical to national security. Public purchasers would be instructed to take account of risks arising from dependence on international suppliers. The examples it cites are of the steel and defence sectors, and a statement about “significant concerns about national security” may be an allusion to the previous government’s decision in 2020 to ban the Chinese technology company Huawei from supplying parts of the UK's 5G network infrastructure.
If the government takes these powers, it will, however, be a critical test of its repeated statements – now a standard ‘government line’ – that food security is national security. There can be no aspect of national life that could threaten our security more by reliance on foreign suppliers than the food we eat. The case for using the powers to support the food and farming sector is ready-made. If food security is still national security, they must be deployed to protect it.
Frustratingly in the process of answering the consultation, this was the one set of proposals that the government did not invite responses on; the paper says it will instead “engage with relevant national security stakeholders as necessary.” As it does so, we can hope that the government will remember its own rhetoric.
Instead, we were left with questions about a set of proposals on encouraging spending with smaller businesses, ensuring contracted firms pay their suppliers promptly, building suppliers’ contributions to jobs, opportunities and skills, and setting a procurement criterion on the social value generated by a contract. Questions about exemptions for people services contracts chosen by users and moving service delivery back in-house fell beyond our remit, but otherwise we were broadly supportive. We called for rural businesses to be fully involved and accounted for, so that they and their communities are not left behind.
You can read our full consultation response here. The Countryside Alliance will continue to take every opportunity to promote the public procurement of local and British food; our full report on the current landscape is expected later this month.