Meeting of the Parliament 10 February 2026 [Draft]
I have four amendments in this group, all of which basically deal with the same point.
At stage 2, I lodged an amendment requiring community wealth building plans to include a target for the amount of procurement spend that would be spent in the local economy, therefore supporting local businesses. We heard an ask for that in stage 1 evidence from the Federation of Small Businesses, among others, and I was pleased that the committee agreed to that amendment at stage 2. My amendments in this group seek to remove the wording that was added to the bill at stage 2 and replace it with what could fairly be called more accurate and precise wording.
Amendment 19 would leave out subsection (5A) of section 5, which is the wording that was inserted at stage 2, replacing that with new wording, as shown in amendment 19, which has the same intention but recognises that a community wealth building partnership is not, in itself, intended to have legal personality. The wording refers instead to “an indicative target” for spend with individual “local economic operators”
“pursuant to public contracts entered into by the community wealth building partners”
but not by the partnership itself.
Amendment 28 would define the term “public contract” in a way that draws on the equivalent term in the Public Contracts (Scotland) Regulations 2015, making it clear that the provision relates only to contracts for works, supplies or services and does not extend to other forms of contractual arrangement, such as contracts for the lease or purchase of land, employment contracts or other contracts not typically subject to public procurement policy or legislation.
Amendment 30 states that a report is to be produced, under section 7A of the bill, containing data on the percentage spent with local economic operators by the community wealth building partners, so that we can keep track of that. Amendment 32 would delete a summary requirement that was inserted into the bill at stage 2.