Across Europe, governments are confronting the same uncomfortable truth. Economic growth means little politically if people do not feel its benefits in their everyday lives.

The cost of living, insecure work, unaffordable housing and pressure on public services have contributed to a growing sense that the economy is not working well enough for ordinary people. Rebuilding confidence in mainstream politics means showing that government can make a practical difference to people’s lives.

That thinking lies behind Manchesterism and its insistence that economic progress must go hand in hand with social progress. It is also visible in the European Commission’s proposals for a new Public Procurement Act, published on 9 September.

Procurement might seem an unlikely place to look for an answer. But governments spend vast sums buying the goods, works and services on which all of us depend. How that money is spent affects wages and working conditions, who gets access to employment, which businesses can compete, what happens in local economies and the environmental impact we leave behind.

So procurement is not simply an administrative process. It is economic policy.

The European proposals make that unusually clear. Social and environmental considerations can shape the specification — what the public authority actually decides to buy. They can form part of the award criteria by which competing bids are judged. They can become contract-performance conditions which determine how the contract must be delivered. And, where relevant, they can also be reflected in selection criteria.

For BetterForUs, this matters. Fair working conditions, including remuneration, can be written into contract-performance conditions. Public authorities should use that opportunity to put the Real Living Wage and good work into the contracts they let, rather than leaving them as promises around the edges.

The environmental provisions are equally important. Procurement can support environmental and climate objectives and a more circular economy through durability, repair, reuse and refurbishment, recycled materials and waste prevention. These outcomes can help determine what is bought in the first place.

Europe is also proposing to give quality real weight. For labour-intensive contracts, quality would normally account for at least 50% of the marks, with significant social considerations included within that assessment. Quality can also be secured through specifications and contract-performance conditions themselves.

And there is another powerful market-shaping tool: reserved contracts. Larger contracts can be divided into meaningful lots, with appropriate opportunities reserved for organisations whose purpose is bringing disabled and disadvantaged people into employment. Instead of simply accepting the existing supplier market, procurement can help create routes into work and build a more diverse market.

But Britain does not need to wait for new legislation to do this.

The Procurement Act 2023 already gives commissioners considerable freedom. Social, economic and environmental outcomes can be built into award criteria where they relate to the contract. Authorities can decide what they require through the specification and secure its delivery through the contract. They have a duty to consider whether larger procurements should be divided into lots, and the Act retains reserved contracts for supported employment providers.

There are differences. UK conditions of participation are more tightly drawn, focusing on a supplier’s legal and financial capacity and technical ability to deliver the contract. Nor does the Procurement Act impose Europe’s proposed minimum weighting for quality. But the wider freedom to procure strategically is already there.

That is why the European proposals are so interesting. They are not discovering something that could not be done before. They are making the possibilities explicit and bringing them together into a much clearer vision of what public procurement is for.

Manchesterism approaches the same question from place upwards. If Good Growth is to mean anything, people need to experience its benefits in their jobs, wages, neighbourhoods and environment.

The Procurement Act gives British public authorities many of the tools. Manchesterism gives us a powerful place-based reason to use them. Europe is showing how clearly the purpose can be expressed.

The question for commissioners should no longer be: what social value can we add to this contract?

It should be: what do we want this public money to achieve for this place and its people — and how do we design the procurement to make it happen?

That is public good procurement.

BetterForUs — the campaign for public good procurement.