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Government promises to ‘slash red tape’ as part of post-Brexit procurement green paper
The government has today published a green paper that sets out how public procurement will be overhauled following Britain’s departure from the EU.
In the introduction to the paper, the government said the current regimes for awarding public contracts, minimum standards for which are set out in EU law, contain “too much red tape for buyers and suppliers alike”.
It promised to develop “a progressive, modern regime which can adapt to the fast-moving environment in which business operates”.
Proposals include the introduction of a new competitive flexible procedure to replace five of the existing procedures: restricted, competitive dialogue, competitive procedure with negotiation, innovation partnerships and design contests.
The procedure will have “minimal detailed rules” and “will give commercial teams maximum flexibility to design a procurement process that meets their needs and the needs of the market, the government said.
The government said it also intends to legislate to require contracting authorities to have regard to the government’s strategic priorities for public procurement in a new National Procurement Policy Statement.
“Taxpayers’ money spent through public procurement will be used to deliver government priorities through projects and programmes that generate economic growth, help our communities recover from the COVID-19 pandemic and tackle climate change,” the paper said.
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It said there should be a clear “golden thread” from the government’s priorities to the development of strategies and business cases for projects, through to procurement specifications and the awarding of contracts.
To oversee public procurement, the government proposes establishing a new unit that will have powers to review and, if necessary, intervene to improve the commercial capability of contracting authorities.
The green paper also proposes allowing buyers to consider wider social benefits of the supplier – such as economic, social and environmental factors – when assessing who to award a contract to, while also still considering value for money.
A central debarment list of suppliers is also being proposed to make it easier for authorities to identify organisations that must be excluded from public procurement.
The government said small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) will most keenly feel the benefits of the new procurement regimes, due to the current impact of “long, bureaucratic and costly” processes.
Rebecca Rees, partner and head of public procurement at Trowers & Hamlins, said “there are lots of goodies” in the green paper for housing procurement practitioners, including more “flexible” framework agreements and the “streamlined” competitive flexible procedure.
She added: “There will be new requirements to get to grips with: transparency will be hard-wired into procurement, with housing providers needing to keep complete records of each stage of the process and publish supporting documents for bidders to see. It will also need to indicate when those documents will be available.
“Feedback letters will become a thing of the past, but it will be replaced with a potentially onerous ‘golden thread’ of information to be published – and many will have to change processes and practice (and IT platforms) to be able to implement those requirements.”
Cabinet office minister Lord Agnew said: “The measures outlined today will transform the current outdated system with new rules, providing flexibility to the public sector and less burden on business.
“These long-standing plans have been developed with international procurement specialists and will help unleash innovation across the country and provide a fairer system for small businesses.”
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