Something must be bad in the world of public sector procurement when politicians are waking up to the fact that something needs to be done about it. Much has been said – and even more observed – about the poor management skills that seem to underpin much of the public sector’s procurement management, but little seems to get done, so any signs of activity among politicians are to be welcomed.
The Labour Party threw procurement into the general election mix when it launched calls in mid-March for the post of procurement minister to be created at Cabinet level. There should be a civil service buyer for every £1 million of central government spending, according to a Labour Party procurement task force report.
The report, produced by a Task Force including the party’s Finance and Industry Group and the Society of Labour Lawyers, says that a professionally resourced procurement and contract management function should be established within the civil service and this should be stated as part of policy from the first day of a Labour government. Chairman of the Task Force Hamish Sandison said: ‘Looking ahead to the next five years at Westminster there has never been a better time in our country’s history for the incoming government to use public procurement to deliver social value and community benefits.’
Despite that, it is unlikely that procurement will become a major campaigning issue at the election; but it should be. The cost of the failures of procuring frameworks are substantial in terms of lost bidding expenses, wasted civil service time, and the non-appearance of important infrastructure, and all the more galling when they are the result of inadequate procurement systems.
The retendering of the £750m Project Management and Full Design Team Services Framework that we write about in news means that the four year framework will only start to operate two and a half years after it was supposed to – assuming all goes well from now on. Fed up clients seem to have been bypassing the framework to get much needed work under way, but that probably imposes its own expense that would have been unnecessary had procurement gone as planned.
Factors being blamed for the delay, apart from the legal challenges threatened once awards were finally made last year, include changes to the framework requirements, the need for an extended consultation period, and a larger than expected number of requests for clarification about what exactly the tender meant. All of these sound like matters that professional management should have ensured did not even arise.
The House of Lords might also have wakened up to the need for closer attention to procurement in construction and a select committee on the built environment is to be created after the election, which will be a Parliamentary first. Procurement is sure to feature in the Lords’ scrutiny as they couldn’t fail to notice that a lot of the built environment is not in fact getting built because of procurement shortfalls.
More pressure from the Lords to reform public sector procurement can only help. If they do fail to notice the problem however then that might signal a need for more reform of the House of Lords as well – but that would be an issue for another campaign.
Nick Barrett
Editor