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Procurement Green Paper Briefings: synopsis of the proposed changes

Procurement Green Paper Briefings: synopsis of the proposed changes

Published

Feb 03 2021

Written By

Partner
UK

With over 25 years' experience as a leading technology lawyer and now based in both our London and San Francisco offices, I have extensive experience advising on tech infrastructure and outsourcing projects.

Stuart Cairns

Partner
UK

I am a London-based partner in our Commercial practice, focusing on public sector and utilities procurement, particularly in infrastructure. I have worked extensively with all manner of Government and regulated bodies both nationally and internationally.

On 15 December 2020, the Cabinet Office published its proposals for transforming the current public procurement rules. In the words of Lord Agnew, Minister of State for the Cabinet Office, the UK’s exit from the European Union “provides a historic opportunity to overhaul our outdated public procurement regime”. In our view, the Green Paper certainly suggests that the Cabinet Office are aiming to make the most of this opportunity.

The Green Paper is some 78 pages in length and explains the Government’s current thinking in terms of what a ‘new’ regime may look like. However, it is clear that many of the ideas proposed within the paper require much further clarification in order to fully explain how such reforms would work in practice. There are also some proposals which may require further consideration from a practical perspective, and whether they are likely to help or hinder achieving a better, more flexible, regime.

Given the length of the Green Paper, and in light of the fact that much of the document assumes that readers will have a fairly advanced understanding of the current public procurement regime, we have produced a document provides a summarised version of the proposals, together with a comparison between the current and the proposed regime.

The Cabinet Office has asked for feedback on its proposals by 10 March 2021. We intend to submit a response to the consultation and as part of this, we invite our clients and contacts to submit any thoughts to us in advance of this deadline, in the event that they do not wish to respond directly to the consultation themselves. We believe that the proposals should be of equal importance/interest to authorities and utilities, as well as private sector suppliers with a public sector customer base.

For those interested in hearing more about the proposals discussed in the attached document, we would encourage you to register for our forthcoming event entitled “Procurement & the Government Green Paper - Future insights and discussion with Sue Arrowsmith QC” on 11 February 2021. Further details about the event and how to register can be found here.

We hope that you find the document useful. We would be delighted to hear your thoughts on the proposals and would encourage you to contact any member of our UK Public Projects and Procurement Team to discuss further.

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