Finance Committee

So, we'll move on to the third item, which is the Financial Implications of the Health Service Procurement (Wales) Bill—the evidence session with the Minister. Welcome.

A warm welcome to you this morning. Would you be able to introduce your officials and yourself for the record?

I'm Eluned Morgan. I'm the Minister for Health and Social Services.

Dafydd Evans, deputy director, life sciences and innovation.

Leanne Roberts. I'm the policy lead for healthcare procurement reform.

Okay. A very warm welcome to you all and thank you for joining us in this meeting this morning.

A warm welcome to you. Obviously, we've had the Bill and we've had the explanatory memorandum, so I'd like to crack on with some questions, if we can. I'd like to start by trying to understand the purpose of the Health Service Procurement (Wales) Bill and the extent of the changes it proposes and the costs it is likely to incur. So, can you outline the purpose of the health service procurement Bill, why it's proposed now, the link to changes being made in the UK Government and the consequences of not legislating?

Okay. Thanks. This is not the most exciting Bill ever to come in front of the Senedd. I think we can start with that. But, it is actually a response to something that's happening elsewhere, and there is a need for us to respond. So, if I can just run through quickly the background to this, just to try and bring it to life, because it is quite dry. So, I'll just try to explain a little bit about how we've got here.

So, after the UK left the European Union, the UK Government said, 'Do you know what, we're going to do procurement differently? We don't have to comply now with the European rules. We're going to look at procurement in a different way.' At the same time, there was a health Bill, now the Health and Care Act 2022, going through Parliament, and they said, 'Hang on, actually, we might want to do something a little bit different in relation to health, because there are examples where, for example, we have services that we commission—quite often, quite specialist services—where we're getting a really good service and we don't really want to go through the whole procurement rigmarole when we're getting a good service, we're getting good value for money. We might want to do something slightly differently in future.' So, that was the thinking. And so what happened was that the UK Government, within the Health and Care Act, carved out clinical services from general procurement. And so that's the background.

Now, what that meant is that we're in a situation—. Obviously, we live cheek by jowl with England, and there are services that are highly, highly specialised sometimes that you just can't get in Wales and we need to procure from England. And the danger was, then, that actually we would have a very different playing field when it came to procurement, and there was a danger that we might get into a situation where some of those people providing the services for us in Wales at the moment might say, 'Oh, god, they've got a completely different regime. We won't bother with them anymore.' And so there's a slight danger in that space. So, we decided that we wanted to at least have the ability to have a level playing field, if that's what we wanted. And so what we're trying to do here is to try to make sure we have that ability.

Now, it's quite difficult because we don't really want much of a gap between what's happening in England and what's happening in Wales. So, that's why there's a bit of urgency to this, because the NHS—. Obviously, we've been discussing with the people involved in this very niche approach to commissioning, and they were very clear, 'Look, we don't want much of a gap. We don't want to be exposed in this place.' So, the idea is that we try to mirror what is happening in England, but we can't know whether we really want to mirror it until we see the detail. So, this is a framework—this is a framework Bill. It just gives us the powers to change things if we want to. And until we see how they're going to change the regulations,—so, secondary law—until we see what they're going to do with it, we can't be absolutely sure whether we do want to absolutely have a level playing field, but at least we'll have the ability to decide. So, we've been in a situation where the Department of Health and Social Care in England consulted on their proposals last spring. We needed to just try to work out how that was going to affect us in Wales. And what we've done is we've grabbed the first legislative slot that we could.

Absolutely, Minister. As you say, doing nothing and having no framework Bill means we have no way of remedying if that level playing field causes us real issues in continuing health services. So, that's the fundamental point, and, as the Minister has said, there have been a number of ways where we've tried to remedy that, and the only and best way is effectively this Bill coming forward at this time.

I'll bring Mike in in just a second. Just following on from that, seeing as this is the Finance Committee, on the financial cost of not doing this, have you quantified that at all, or have you got a way of quantifying that?

It is quite difficult to quantify, because we don't know what the regulations are going to be, but what we do know is that there is potential for the costs to be, for example, us not being able to—. The financial costs might be quite difficult to quantify, but there will certainly be service implication costs. So, for example, there's an out-of-hours contract for people who receive out-of-hours care on the border between Wales and England. That's a joint contract. It's called Shropdoc. Now, at the moment, that's under one contract. If we were under a different regime, we couldn't procure that in the way that we are at the moment, so potentially you would have a gap. There would certainly be a cost to patients in that kind of circumstance. Now, there are lots of other examples, but I think that kind of brings it to life a little bit. There are obviously other costs, but I'm sure we can go on to the detail of those.

I'll bring Mike in.

Although we've left the European Union rules, haven't we signed up for World Trade Organization rules? Is that correct or not? Any costs that have to be met will have to be set inside and obey World Trade Organization rules, which, for those who remember the European Union debate, was going to be the simple way of getting lots of trade with lots of parts of the world. Leaving aside the politics of it, if we've signed up to them, is there a cost of actually implementing them?

Clearly, both for UK Government in bringing forward the Procurement Bill, or DHSC in bringing forward the provider selection regime, you can only bring that competence forward, effectively, within the boundaries of international obligations. Similarly, in bringing forward this Bill and in bringing forward the regulations, we would need to make sure that we were meeting our obligations under wider international obligations

I think it's probably worth saying, also, if we didn't do this, we would come under the new UK Government public procurement Bill and so we're going to have to learn a new regime anyway. Whatever happens, things are going to change here. So, the question is: which regime do we want to change into? There will be a cost of changing to whatever we do under the new UK Government public procurement Bill.

I assume, and correct me if I'm wrong, that it then means that we have—. By having this in place, we would have the control ourselves rather than being under the jurisdiction of something that's next door in a devolved area, basically.

Yes. I think it's worth bearing that in mind. We could have said, 'Actually, even though it's under the Health and Care Act, that's an English approach.' In principle, we could have said, 'Well, actually, can we have a legislative consent motion and can you just build us into that?' but if we did that, we would have to comply with absolutely everything, not just the framework agreement but then all of the regulations that may or may not come underneath that, and it may be that some of those regulations wouldn't sit comfortably with some of the principles. It may be that they go full throttle for full-out, 'It's all got to be privatised,' whereas actually that would make us feel uncomfortable, so we may not then want to comply. But, actually, if they said, 'Let's get more third sector organisations to be providing care in this space', that would perhaps appeal to us more. So, I just think we've just got to—. What we didn't want to do is to tie our hands and not be in a situation where we could actually respond to what we wanted to do. So, you're absolutely right—it's about devolved responsibility.

One of the things you said earlier was that it was in specific and quite niche areas. Is there any chance that it could go into more general areas?

No.

Any general procurement of—. Is it quite specific in the Bill that it is—? So, are there named areas, or are there just areas, and, then, it's futureproofing the Bill, if you like, that it can't be abused in the future?

Yes. So, I think what's important in this—. Everything is changing in procurement, and all at the same time. Clearly, the NHS procures, and we will have to have—however the provider selection regime works, it will need to work and butt up nicely with the rest of the procurement that's coming forward under the new Procurement Bill. And, so, generic—. General goods and services, you know, buying goods, and buying services, will be under the new Procurement Bill, but, where this is about procuring clinical health services—and that is the sector that the Minister talked about being quite specialised—that will be the definition and scope of this. So, we've defined it specifically within the Bill as matching the health services as described in the National Health Service Act 2006. But the detail will be in the regulations, and the way that the Department of Health and Social Care are currently looking at that is that there will be a prescribed list of services under this term called 'common procurement vocabulary', which is the procurement people's way of knowing what you can buy under one regime or another.

So, that clarity will need to be there, and in the statutory guidance that will be developed—and DHSC are doing it for England at the moment—that should make it clear, basically, to those who are eligible to use the PSR and when they can use it. But, actually, when they can't, we'll need to come back to the Procurement Bill.

Before we move on from this particular question, you've talked about the regulations that have come down the line. And, as they unfold, and as we need to regulate, what oversight will this committee have on the financial implications of those regulations? Or is it going to be just presented in Plenary? What's your thought process of that, because we could be talking about millions of pounds here out of your budget, or does that go to the health committee to scrutinise? Because with any framework Bill, scrutinising the Bill itself, fine, but a lot of the detail is in the regulations, and I'm concerned, potentially, that financial decisions are being made about regulations that aren't being scrutinsied by this committee.

Can I ask Leanne to come in there?

Yes, sure. Thanks, Minister. Yes, we will be publishing a full regulatory impact assessment as part of the secondary legislation, so, obviously, there will be costs associated included within that document. Now, as the Minister said, at this point in time, it's very difficult for us to actually quantify the costs to the service until we know the detail of those regulations. So, yes, we will be doing that in the future.

And, I think—. So, the Bill is—. It's affirmative regulations, so we're very clear that that detail needs the full scrutiny in the Senedd, and you'll also see, on the face of the Bill, that there are issues there around transparency, and how those will be brought forward in the provider selection regime, which will cover, clearly, issues around costs and finance, which I know is important for transparency, to make sure that it's not abused as a regime.

Yes. It's not just this Bill, it's—

Sure, absolutely.

—all framework Bills; something that we're seeing is more and more framework Bills coming through, and regulations. It's how we actually make sure that the financial scrutiny is done, and that's the remit of this committee.

But let's move on to the RIA. It identifies a cost of £3.4 million associated with developing and implementing the new health service procurement regime, but not the financial implications of that regime. Can you outline what the RIA includes, and why you've not quantified the costs of the new regime?

Well, I'll just start, and bring Dafydd in. So, obviously, one of the points that we've covered here is the staff costs. So, there will be people involved in procurement who will need to be trained on how this new system works. What we've done is we looked at things like—. Because this is so specialist, we have shared services that do the procurement, the very specialist services for the NHS. So, we've estimated that about 10 per cent of those people will need to be trained and need to understand the new procurement. The same thing for NHS where they are commissioning directly. So, there will be some people there. We know who's working in this space, so that's how we've got that. And that's just to make sure that they familiarise themselves with the process.

What we haven't covered here is the benefits and impacts on suppliers and businesses and local authorities, and that's because we don't have that detail yet, so it's very difficult for us to calculate that. So, I guess that's just part of the problem of not knowing the detail yet, but we'll, obviously, get that in time. Dafydd.

I think that covers it. We've been able to give you the best estimate, effectively, of what developing the regime and implementing that initially would be amongst the group of people that we would do. That is no different to the DHSC and how they were able to do it in bringing forward their legislation, because the issue at the moment is that you need to understand how the market would react—so, how will the market react to this? And, to some extent, that is difficult to quantify. But I think the point to be made is that the purpose of this Bill is, basically, to be making it easier for people and to remove unnecessary activities in relation to procurement. So, the purpose behind this Bill is trying to find efficiencies, find collaboration, improve services, and therefore save costs where we can. But it's very difficult to quantify those at this point.

Okay, thank you. You've talked about living cheek by jowl, and the legislation that's going through in Westminster. When you introduced the Bill in February, you suggested that timing will maximise procedural efficiencies by coinciding with the UK procurement changes. Can you expand on the implications of the changes being proposed in England and the potential impact of slippage or timescales slippage or things going out of sync? Because this is trying to be in sync, but what's the financial implication of not being in sync?

I guess there will be a bit of a gap, so we're just trying to make that gap as short as we can.

Do you know, roughly, how long that gap will be?

Well, it depends, because it hasn't finished its route through Westminster yet, and it depends when they come up with a regulatory proposal.

But your best guess?

Well, it's going through at the moment, so—.

Yes. We expect it. I think if you look, publicly, and DHSC have given when it won't be done by, perhaps October, but I think they are still hopeful, in 2023, that they'll be able to bring those regulations forward. So, we anticipate those, but, as the Minister says, we need to understand when they finally will lay those regulations.

So, we expect them maybe this year.

Yes.

And, obviously, we won't be able to get this through and get the detail done until maybe spring next year.

But, this Bill itself will have Royal Assent this year.

This year. This summer, we hope. That's why we're going at a gallop.

As long as everything goes through.

Sure. Absolutely.

I'm not pre-empting any decisions. But, there we are. Okay.

I think what we're trying to do here is make sure that we minimise that time gap, as you said. Because you're asking us around the implications of those—. As contracts are renewed by the NHS in Wales or, actually, for providers who currently provide services, say, under frameworks or something, who are not contracted, they will be able to make that choice and decision effectively from the day it's live in England. So, that's why we're trying to minimise the time gap. But also, we anticipate that the wider procurement changes coming next spring/summer—so, again, trying to coincide those at roughly the same time so that it makes it easier for implementation—the NHS can land these and others in that same time frame.

Okay. The RIA on this is a three-year implementation period, or covers the period. How long do you think it will be? How long will the process actually take for everything to wash through, if you like? Is three years a reasonable assumption, or is it going to take longer, or do you hope that it'll be sooner?

Leanne.

Well, obviously the relevant authorities will have to comply with the regulations and the guidance; they'll have to start complying as soon as they come into force. And, obviously, there will be a lead-in time for actually gearing up, making sure that staff are aware of how the new procedures will work, et cetera. So, there will be a lead-in time on this, but, obviously, they will have to comply as soon as the regulations come into force.

So, if there's a contract being tendered for now, regulations come into force next week, the contract is signed now and bridging over two regimes, are there any financial implications for our service providers here in Wales, or—?

So, my understanding is that, as I say, contracts—and they are contracts—that are let now will need to—

Be seen through.

—will need to be seen through. And then, to answer your question, I think we would expect, within three years, for this effectively to have been landed. Because it would be the first 12 or 18 months where you would be implementing a new regime in terms of training and making that live, and then it's all about, then, the whole suite of contracts that there are currently, how long they take to effectively be renewed and come through on a PSR rather than what they've been let through currently on the old regime.

So, I think it's probably worth stating that, actually, that's part of the purpose of this Bill, because, at the moment, you have to go out to tender quite frequently. So, those contracts will come up fairly frequently, and then you have to go through a whole procurement process, whereas, actually, what this new provider selection regime might do for you is to allow you to go for much longer periods. So, once it's gone through once, once you've got it, if people are complying with value for money and giving the kind of service that they need to give—. The need for procurement, I think that's the point, isn't it—trying to just stop unnecessary competitive tendering.

Okay. Finally from me, before I move on to Tom, you estimate that £5.1 million of the Welsh Government's staff cost linked to activity around the UK Government legislation, with a further £700,000 staff costs for this Bill, can you provide further information on the activity to be delivered and to what extent the Welsh Government has capacity to deal with both sets of changes, and could it result in the need for additional staffing?

I don't think we need additional staffing; it's just a question of training staff who are currently employed in a new system.

I think, Minister—thank you. So, in terms of the question, in terms of Welsh Government, as you say, the biggest cost to Welsh Government—the £5 million you talked about—is about bringing in the new Procurement Bill. So, that's if we do nothing. Now, the costs of bringing this Bill, as the Minister has said, is that extra £700,000 for ourselves. And, at the moment, we've costed effectively what that resource, what we have currently developed in this Bill, and that resource will go on to develop the regulations.

And just—. Sorry, Tom, I'll bring you in in a second. But, with having just been through Stage 2 and Stage 3 and the scrutiny of the social partnership Bill, and talking to procurement specialists, do we have the expertise to be able to train them in the new regime within Wales, or will we have to go outside of Wales to bring in experts to be able train people up to standard?

Well, I guess nobody knows what the new regime looks like, so we'll have to wait to see what it looks like, and then—. You know, England will only be a few weeks ahead of us, effectively.

Yes, that's right, Minister. So, we know that, on the Procurement Bill, there is generic training that'll be developed there by UK Government, and we will be able to use that in Wales. So, we will want to have similar conversations with the Department of Health and Social Care around what training there is on the provider selection regime, and, just like things like the regulations, how much of that we can use and bring that forward.

But that's been factored into some of the costs around training and—

Our best estimate at this stage.

Okay. Thank you. Sorry, Tom; you've been very patient.

We've talked a bit about staffing already, but the most significant cost that you identify in the RIA is the £2.7 million to NHS bodies for familiarisation and implementation of the new regime. How have you estimated the 10 per cent increase in staff costs to NHS bodies, and the timing of those costs, and are you expecting NHS bodies to manage that within their existing staff?

We are expecting them to do it within their existing staff, but it's just trying to make sure that there's an understanding that they're going to have to do things differently. If you were to carve out the time, then that's effectively what it would cost.

I think Mike did have a quick supplementary there.

A very quick supplementary. You give us the final number; you don't give the spreadsheet that created that final number. Why can't we see the workings out? The Chair is used to me saying that every time people come and talk to us. But you've just given us a number—what about the workings out?

Shall we send that to you?

Yes, please.

That would be lovely. Thank you. Tom.

There was one point I made in the middle there that wasn't picked up; I appreciate it was a long question. How did you estimate the 10 per cent increase in staff costs to NHS bodies as part of that?

Not all people involved in procurement will need to be trained in this, because, actually, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of people involved in procurement. But this is a very, very specialised kind of procurement. We're talking about clinical services that are procured, in particular, on a cross-border basis.

We have had informal consultation with the NHS in developing these thoughts, and it was from those discussions, alongside knowing who, as the Minister has described, and then developing our best estimate of how much of their time would it take to train and understand the new regime.

Okay. You talked a bit there about consultation. I understand there wasn't a full consultation exercise. So how did you engage with NHS bodies, and other stakeholders, to understand the financial implications of the Bill?

We've identified who it is we think will be impacted by this. Obviously, there are people in shared services, there are people in NHS health boards. They're quite easily identifiable, these people. We've also discussed with the trade unions—

And this is informal, I guess.

This is informal, but we know who these people are who are going to be impacted. Leanne, is there anyone else we've—?

We've spoken to trade unions and the NHS shared services partnership. Obviously, within those organisations, there are procurement leads, so we try and engage with the right people, who understand what the scheme will involve, as much as they can at this point, and they help inform us how much we think it may additionally cost in the future, or maybe not cost.

Is it only authorities that have a physical border with England, or is it affecting every health board in Wales?

It's every health board, because they may commission services from England.

You've identified situations where local authorities are the lead procuring authority, but haven't estimated costs to local authorities in the RIA. Since you provided familiarisation and implementation costs for NHS bodies, why haven't you done it for local authorities?

I think the amount of clinical commissioning in local authorities is very, very limited. Just to give you an example, if you wanted to give veterans mental health support, and that very niche advisory service wasn't available in Wales, you might want to commission that from somewhere in England, for example, or highly, highly complex mental health cases that sit within local government, sometimes, because they just butt up against some of the social services aspects of things. But it's very small. And obviously, until we know where the regulations are, we don't know the scope and the amount to which it will be impacted.

Have you had those discussions with Rebecca Evans as the Minister for local authorities, just to give her the heads up that there might be some additional costs involved? Would it need to be found then from that budget line?

It's really all about training, isn't it? The main cost is about training, and in the scope of it, we're not talking about a lot of money at all, I don't think.

I think the Minister is right. We're a bit more definitive about the NHS because we know that is fully and squarely—. In terms of the regulations, exactly which of those do touch on local authorities—. But they'll be much less. But we also know that local authorities, if we timed this at the same time, would be spending a lot of their time implementing the wider Procurement Bill anyway. So, part of the issue is that, actually, incrementally it'll cost less to bring this in at roughly the same time, because there'll be quite a lot of expenditure in local authorities about understanding the new wider procurement regime that will apply to them. So, I think the question is—. As we develop the regulations and the next RIA, we would get into that level of detail where we hopefully can quantify that better for local authorities.

Is there openness as to if there is a cost to local authorities—? As you mentioned, you're not aware of the scope yet. Perhaps that is a cost Welsh Government could meet.

We're not on that page at the moment, and we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. I don't think we've got any other choice; we're going to have to see this through. So, obviously, we would have to find—. I'm not expecting that cost to be additional. Health budgets are really, really stretched for next year.

Can I just ask a question on that? Are you expecting any consequentials from the expenditure in England?

Now, that is a good question. 'I don't know' is the answer to that.

I don't know, so let us ask that question and come back to you. But, again, I don't anticipate that, because this is around giving tools that help in delivering the current services. But we can ask that question.

One final one from me. In the RIA, you haven't estimated financial implications for other bodies like service providers and the third sector. How have you assessed the impact of this Bill and future changes on service providers, which providers will be affected, and what activities they might need to undertake in response to the proposals?

It'll be much easier for us to do that once we know what the regulations look like, and that's the time when we'll be doing that financial impact assessment that we're talking about. It's just too difficult to do that without knowing what the detail says and who, therefore, would be impacted.

Thank you for that. If we can move on to the unquantified aspects, because there are quite a few unquantified aspects of this Bill, including the costs and savings, the process of the post-implementation review, and the work taken forward to support development of the relevant subordinate legislation. Your legislation handbook, published online, says RIAs should set out a best estimate of the cost of the legislation as a whole, and this includes any associated subordinate legislation. Do you feel that the RIA for the health service procurement Bill complies with that?

Yes. I think that the EM sets out as much of the detail as we know at the moment, and therefore the information assessment that's included in the RIA sets out the best estimate based on what we currently know at the moment, which I think is what was asked in that.

It's always the unknowns. We've done some work and we've been looking a little bit at the cost of Bills and Acts as they become law, and they always overrun, or more often than not overrun. So, it's always the nervousness around how accurate are those figures and what we can do when we're doing the scrutiny to look at that, and, obviously, looking at those aspects when we're scrutinising the Bills.

You do not identify any savings associated with this Bill. However, you did mention a bit earlier about some savings, and you say there may be cost savings for NHS bodies and providers in relation to the option of not using a competitive tender. Can you expand on this? What work have you undertaken to understand the opportunities the change might bring, what level of savings that might generate, and whether or not those are financial savings or savings further down the line for third sector organisations, or not having to go through that tender process every two or three years and feel like a hamster on a wheel?

I think that's precisely where the cost savings could come in—that actually you wouldn't need necessarily to go out to tender quite so regularly if somebody is providing a service with which you're happy. But obviously, again, all of that's going to be in the regulations, and until we know what's in the regulations, we don't know where that's going to land. Obviously, that will mean spending a lot less on tendering activities, and you know how much time and effort particularly the third sector spend on tendering. So, that's quite a huge saving for them, I think. I think there are potential savings for the NHS, but obviously we won't know the detail of that until we've got those regulations.

I guess the other thing is that it's not just about the savings, but it's about the costs of not doing this. I think that's perhaps as interesting a question, because doing nothing would still incur a cost, and that cost probably—. Because you'd have to be under the public procurement Bill, you'd have to train people for that anyway. I just think it's really important for people to understand that. And obviously it's not just strictly financial costs—it's really important to understand that the costs to patients, potentially, of not doing this could be quite significant. That's why we're very keen to make sure that we cover this off.

Just following on from that—I'll bring Mike in in a second now—anybody who listened to the debate last night knows I'm a fan of targets, if nobody had guessed. But with KPIs and things, if you're not going through a tendering process, potentially—and this is probably straying into policy rather than financial—. It's those aspects of renewing those contracts without going through a tendering process, and just the safety element. I can see the pragmatic element of, 'It's working—if it ain't broke, don't fix it', but how are you going to be confident in making sure, as the Minister in charge, that you would be confident that the service provided is still of a sufficient standard? Will you be putting KPIs and things in place to make sure that that monitoring process is done well?

A key thing for me is that—and this is one of the things, obviously, we will be consulting on—actually, what are the principles that we're looking for here. Irrespective of the detail of the regulations, what are we trying to do in terms of principles? What are the ethics that are driving us in this space? And they may be slightly different from England. I think things like value for money, quality of services, all of those things I would expect to be some of the principles that we would have to adhere to, and then all of the regulations would have to comply with those principles. We'll be consulting on those principles when we do the 12-week consultation.

One of the things that we heard, actually, as part of the informal consultation from the NHS, just to pick up on it, is that, actually, freeing up some of their time from churning, effectively, contracts through means that time can be then focused on KPIs, on understanding performance better, and understanding the sector better in terms of knowing effectively where those services are coming from. That, I think, is partly the purpose behind, certainly, why the Department of Health and Social Care put that forward. That's some of the feedback we got here, which is why the NHS here is saying there is benefit to them.

Mike wants to come in.

I was going to say my experience has been that negotiated contracts are better than tendered contracts. You have a tendency—and I don't know about health, but certainly in road construction—to tender low and claim. That's the problem with tenders; people work very hard at making their way round through the tender and—. It's nothing to do with health, but a quick example—somebody tendered for putting a pavement in, they didn't put any kerbs in because kerbs weren't part of the contract, and therefore they claimed for putting kerbs in. So, I think it is important that we can work to perhaps save money by negotiating contracts and work with people who know what they're doing in the area.

I think, as the Minister started with, the sector here is very specialised, as the Minister said, and it tends to be a small number of providers providing these services to England and to Wales. I think that's exactly the point here, that it's about developing those wider relationships and collaborations, which, for this sector, the health sector, particularly fits.

Okay. So, a final question from me, and I'll go on to Mike's questions after that. At what point will you be able to undertake a detailed assessment of the financial implications of the new procurement regime and how will you ensure that that assessment informs the decisions whether to proceed with the change?

So, as soon as we know where they've landed in terms of the regulations in England, we can then go out to consultation on those. Again, we're not necessarily signing up at that point, we're going out to consultation on the principles, and people will know what the regulations look like in England at that point. So, I think that's—

And did you say that that's likely to happen in October time, or is that—?

I think—. It depends when they finish.

As I say, we—

As a best guess at the moment.

It depends when they finish in England. So, the timetable is around October, isn't it?

Yes.

Around that time. Okay, so we'll be looking at probably spring next year—

A 12-week—. Yes.

—after that. Okay. Mike, over to you.

As the Minister will remember, under the old Welsh Office, you had things coming out from the Welsh and Scottish Offices that were identical to England, all they did was search and replace 'England' with 'Wales', and then exactly the same document came through. You've talked here that you're looking at that we may be different, but, as England will be about 95 per cent of any contracts between England and Wales, and Wales will be about 5 per cent, aren't there financial dangers of varying too much from what's happening in England?

Absolutely, which is why we're kind of working on the assumption that what we'll be working towards is a level playing field, but we want the flexibility, if they land somewhere where we really, really don't like it, that we don't have to follow them. But it's precisely because of that, Mike, that we are keen to make sure that we do try and level the playing field, because it could be of detriment to the people of Wales if we're not able.

Without wanting to stray into anything apart from finance, it will obviously cost more if we're substantially different from England and people have to do more work, and we won't be an important part of their income.

Absolutely, yes. So, that's the real danger: people may not want to tender for Welsh contracts if we were under a different system.

Can I move on to the regulatory impact assessment? You outline your post-implementation review. I assume that's in line with best practice and you're going to tell us it's in line with best practice. How will you monitor and review the implementation of this Bill so that learning can inform any future procurement regime?

Yes, we will be complying with the normal processes, obviously, and with best practice in Welsh Government. I think it's always important for us to learn as we go along, so there will be a loop back to make sure that we're learning.

Thank you. And finally from me, can you briefly outline the level of detail you intend to include in the financial implications subordinate legislation that may be produced should the Bill be passed? And will you commit to producing a full regulatory impact assessment alongside that legislation, and, alongside that, when we have the first year, produce what it has cost and a breakdown of what it has cost?

Okay. We will be producing a regulatory impact assessment, so that certainly will be a part of it. Leanne, can you give more details, or Dafydd?

We will follow, effectively, best practice where we can, so you'll have the information that we have available at that time in the regulatory impact assessment. As the Minister said, we would want to follow up and learn from that. I think we'd need to understand what's the right time to actually review a new regime. We'll want to do that through independent reviews and, actually, working with the Department of Health and Social Care. So, I think committing to a time now may be difficult, but it would need to be at the right time, I think.

As I'm sure anybody who's listened to any of these Finance Committee meetings knows, it's 'show your working' and it's showing the detail, whether or not it's to this committee or to the health committee. It's being transparent about the costs and the benefits—both sides of the argument—so that we can see where this Bill fits, how it actually delivers those benefits or whether or not it doesn't. It's that assessment that's important, so a commitment from yourselves to be able to show that level of detail would, I'm sure, go a long way to answer Mike's question. Excellent, okay.

Actually, with regard to benefits, what do you see as the main benefit of this Bill? Because you've said that it's not going to set the world on fire with it being very, super exciting, but are there any tangible benefits, or is it more that you're protecting Wales from a potential drive towards a privatised NHS in England, or—? What are the potential benefits?

I think it's protecting us from a potential disbenefit—that's what we're doing here, more than anything else. We're just making sure that we have the opportunity to allow people to tender and to have less of a barrier to tender for some of those contracts than if we were under a different regime. So, by having a similar regime, we're going to lessen that probability.

In anticipation that the way of renewing contracts and things goes well, and hoping that it does and that it takes away some of that burden of being on that hamster wheel of constantly having to reapply for a contract, is that something that you might want to roll out across some services—especially, I'm thinking of mental health services and that sort of thing—across the piece, rather than just in these niche areas?

Well, I think what we need to do is to see how this works and then make an assessment at that point.

Okay, thank you very much. Anybody got any further questions?

Thank you very much for your time this morning. I do understand a little more about the Bill now than I did, particularly after the session we had with the Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee on Monday—that was very interesting—and it'll be interesting to see how this comes through.

So, under Standing Order 17.42, I propose that we resolve to exclude the public from the remainder of this meeting and from the meeting on 23 March. Is everyone agreed? We are. Thank you very much for your time.