Thank you, Llywydd, for the opportunity to contribute to this debate as Chair of the Public Accounts and Public Administration Committee, or PAPAC. The Business Committee agreed that the Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee, or LJC committee, and PAPAC should report on legislative consent memorandum, or LCM, No. 1 by 6 October 2022. On 11 July 2022, the Minister laid before the Senedd a supplementary LCM, No. 2, which was tabled on 27 June 2022. We reported on LCMs 1 and 2 on 22 November 2022. We worked closely with the LJC committee on scrutinising these LCMs, and wrote jointly to the Minister for Finance and Local Government. We invited members of the LJC committee to attend our evidence session, and wrote jointly to the Minister, as indicated, about our joint evidence session with the Minister in September 2022. We also undertook a consultation exercise and received valuable information from the Welsh Local Government Association, Caerphilly County Borough Council and Community Housing Cymru, and I thank them for submitting evidence. Since then, supplementary LCMs relating to this Bill were laid on 19 December 2022 and 7 February 2023. Each time a supplementary LCM was laid, our deadline for reporting was extended. Finally, the Business Committee agreed that the LJC committee and PAPAC should report on supplementary memorandums 3, 4 and 5 by 23 March 2023. Unfortunately, PAPAC had only one meeting scheduled within that time frame. We were disappointed by the short time frame provided to consider and report on the supplementary LCMs as this provided no opportunity for us to either raise concerns with the Minister prior to our reporting or to consider them in further detail.

We'd highlighted serious concerns in our report on LCMs 1 and 2 about the limited opportunities for detailed scrutiny and repeated these in our report on supplementary LCMs 4, 5 and 6. We concur with the LJC committee and disagree with the Minister's suggestion that the process is equal to that of the detailed legislative scrutiny of a Senedd Bill. We made six recommendations in our reports on supplementary LCMs 1 and 2 and LCMs 3, 4, and 5, and our report on supplementary LCMs 4, 5, and 6 raised several further issues.

We were concerned about whether an amendment to clause 123—commencement—achieves the Minister's policy intent. It is unclear whether an assessment of the potential financial implications of not giving consent to a Minister of the Crown to commence provisions in the Bill has been undertaken and what the financial implications would be for the Welsh Government or the wider public sector in Wales of not providing consent. The financial implications of a possible subsequent removal of provisions in relation to Welsh contracting authorities from the Bill are similarly unclear, as are any steps the Welsh Government may be required to take to introduce its own legislation to replace them.

We note that if Wales did not give consent to the UK Government to commence the Bill’s provisions in relation to Welsh contracting authorities, and Wales was carved out from the Act, the financial implications would be greater than currently provided for in the financial assessment, both in relation to the lost opportunity cost involved in developing the present Bill, and the additional cost of any alternate Welsh legislation. We recommended that the Minister gave further consideration to the potential financial implications of not giving consent to commence provisions in the Bill, given the insufficient detail in the financial section of memorandum No. 5. We were also concerned that the level of detail in memorandum No. 5 was lacking as to the effect of amendments made to the Bill. Our report on LCMs 1 and 2 noted that memorandum No. 2 included references that amendments are 'minor and provide greater clarity'. We believe this is a simplistic summary of the amendments, as some summaries within memorandum No. 5 do not set out how and why the new memorandum differs from the previous memorandum.

We support the conclusion of the LJC committee that emphasises to the Minister and all Welsh Ministers the importance of providing sufficient detail to Members of the Senedd within legislative consent memoranda, especially where timescales for Senedd scrutiny are compressed. Whilst the committee did not oppose these legislative consent memoranda, Mabon ap Gwynfor MS wished to record his view that he is opposed to the legislative consent memoranda in relation to the UK Procurement Bill. The committee will continue to pursue these issues with the Welsh Government.