In our interviews, we’ve highlighted different people who are getting behind the ‘sustainability and procurement with purpose’ cause. From entrepreneurs to seasoned CPOs, from smart young procurement professionals to lifetime accountancy gurus, it is good to see just how many impressive people are now passionate about improving the world through procurement.
David Gigg is approaching retirement after a career spent as a central government civil servant, working in policy areas, mainly in and around procurement, initially in the DSS/DWP then in central units such as OGC, Cabinet Office and Crown Commercial Service (CCS). He has never been a practitioner, but has worked at senior levels on many of the practices and policies you might see in government procurement today.
For the last three years he has been Head of Policy Delivery in CCS, working on social value and related matters. He has always had a strong sense of public service, and served a few years back as mayor of Tadcaster – a lovely Yorkshire town, famed for being the home to no less than three separate breweries!
His interest in social value was sparked further when he was seconded in 2014 for two years to work with a charity, “Movement to Work”. That organisation “supports employers to provide work placements that combine employability skills training with on-the-job experience” for young people, particularly from disadvantaged backgrounds. “Although it wasn’t really procurement-related, it gave me a new perspective on how businesses could support social causes”, Gigg says.
He came back into CCS at a good time to work on those issues. “CCS frameworks and deals are used by local government and other bodies outside Whitehall, and increasingly those customers were asking us to incorporate social value into the contracts and frameworks we were putting in place”.
When the Social Value Act was introduced in 2012, its focus was very much on local procurement. But in 2018,David Lidington, who was then the Minister responsible for public procurement, announced that social value would be used more extensively in central government procurement.
Since then, it has taken some time to get guidance agreed and published (we suspect Brexit and Covid has pushed other issues onto the back burner somewhat!) But as Gigg says, “it is clear that both CCS customers and Minsters want this to happen”. However, it may be that the high-level priorities will change over time - for instance, it seems likely that local employment and building national resilience in supply chains may take greater priority post Covid and Brexit.
Back to CCS, and there are challenges when letting a framework, as CCS is not going to be the final “user” of the contract. “So what we have tried to do is structure frameworks that give users options in terms of the social value that suppliers can provide”, Gigg explains. For instance, the recent vehicle hire framework describes broad themes, but local users can tailor the social value they receive from suppliers to meet their own needs and priorities.
In some cases, suppliers are also being asked to sign up to codes of conduct or the equivalent as part of qualification processes. However, Gigg says there is still work to do because, “there is less clarity about how this is working in practice at local level”. But more evidence is being collected now to bridge that gap. It is “not our business in the centre to measure the social value being obtained locally” he says, but “we need to know whether our approach is working!”
We then moved onto the modern slavery agenda. Gigg and his team have been working with the Home Office’s Modern Slavery Unit and Cabinet Office policy makers to drive that agenda. “We’ve been thinking about how we can use government spend to tackle the issue, using our spending power to persuade major suppliers to become exemplars in terms of tackling the issue”.
The first UK government modern slavery statement was published in March 2020, and it is more detailed than the word “statement” might suggest, being an impressive 29-page document. A “procurement policy notice” (PPN), guidance on the topic and an assessment tool (MSAT) were also launched.
Having taken a look at it, the assessment tool is also very extensive and impressive. It is aimed at suppliers, and the top 34 “strategic suppliers” to government have all completed this. “It goes way beyond the Act, and gets into a lot more detail”, Gigg says. CCS has also asked over 300 suppliers in high risk spend categories like construction and IT to complete the assessment.
“It is relevant to firms large and small, and in many sectors” Gigg says, and he points out that cases such as the Kozee Sleep prosecution showed modern slavery could happen in the UK and even in a business which was supplying respected firms including John Lewis. “In general, we haven’t been using the big stick. It’s been a case of getting suppliers on board. We need businesses to want to do this, to look seriously at their supply chains, ask the right questions and take action where necessary”.
Interestingly, the focus for CCS has been on existing suppliers rather than using the process as part of supplier selection. “Should we exclude suppliers who don’t have a robust modern slavery statement? It is an option in the procurement regulations currently, but it might be mandated one day. But we have focused on working with current suppliers up to now”.
The next step is for individual government departments to publish their own modern slavery statements in 2021. Gigg is also interested in how to make best use of audits in this area – a tricky subject, as we have seen in different areas within the wider procurement with purpose agenda. “That might be something I will pursue after I leave the civil service”, he says.
We would certainly hope he can continue to contribute to this area, given the considerable expertise he has gained in the last few years. That’s of course assuming he doesn’t become the Mayor of Tadcaster for the second time, and take up that gruelling regime of brewery inspections again ...