Corporate responsibility is set to receive a significant boost in the
UK as the result of a government-commissioned inquiry urging ministers
to introduce a sustainable procurement plan covering their annual
£150billion ($277bn) spending programme.
The Sustainable
Procurement Task Force, set up a year ago, has told the government to
set mandatory minimum product and service standards for sustainable
procurement in construction in priority areas such as energy and food,
and by 2009 to phase out products and services that fall below those
standards.
It says all public sector organizations spending
more than £1bn a year must appoint a commercial director with
responsibility for sustainable procurement by April 2007.
The task force was established at the behest of the prime minister, Tony Blair, who is expected to respond by October.
Its
final report, published last month, says the government has made some
progress on responsible sourcing of its goods and services, but that
the work carried out to date has been limited and piecemeal. It
recommends existing sustainable procurement initiatives be rationalized
into a ‘single integrated framework’, with overall responsibility given
to one government department, most likely the Treasury.
Once
the government has made clear what standards are mandatory, it should
then be prepared to ‘apply sanctions’, among them the withdrawal of
contracts for non-compliance, with monitoring by ‘external scrutiny
bodies’.
Of 174 government ‘spending areas’, the task force
has identified 18 as priorities for sustainable procurement and further
narrowed this down to a shortlist of ten (see box).
The 18
areas have a combined spend of £88bn a year, represent 59 per cent of
government spending on procurement and were identified by volume of
expenditure, sustainability risk and the potential for ‘quick wins.’
White goods and paper are given as examples of quick wins.
The
findings of the inquiry have generally been welcomed by business. Bruce
Bendell, head of CSR at United Utilities, said that although the
measures would have only a small direct impact on his company, they
would serve as a ‘welcome signal’ and were ‘long overdue’.
The
task force included Charlotte Grezo, Vodafone’s CSR director, Shaun
McCarthy, BAA’s head of sustainability and utilities, and Hans
Wendschlag, head of environmental strategies at Hewlett-Packard Europe.
