Recommendation 11

Sustainable government procurement presents a pathway to increasing the sustainability of supply chains. Government performance against existing sustainable procurement policies has been unimpressive to date. The 2020–21 Greening Government Commitments report indicated that ten departments had submitted information about their performance against the procurement commitment in that year. Given that 2020–21 was a year in which the pandemic had a significant impact, the Cabinet Office ruled that the data submitted “should not be considered as a representative measure of overall government performance against this commitment” and declined to publish the data submitted. We expect Ministers to require full reporting by their departments against the procurement commitment, and all other Greening Government Commitments, for 2021–22: in the interests of transparency and the encouragement of high levels of compliance, the data should be published in full in the 2021–22 annual report.