Happy Procurement Act 2025 Go-Live Day

 Happy Procurement Act 2025 Go-Live Day to all those who celebrate....  on Monday 24th February 2025.

Supplier registrations on the new Central Digital Platform go live now (Monday) though I think I might leave it a day or two to avoid the rush.

You might even wait until after you have visited The Procurement Act Live at the NEC on Thursday 27th Feb 2025 - where I shall be presenting 5 short seminars but more importantly there will be speakers from Cabinet Office and loads of stalls, stands and seminars.

Details are here

Hope to see you there

The Procurement Act Live - NEC - 27th February 2025

 The Procurement Act has been delayed from October 2024 to 24th February 2025 - and just 3 days later we shall be running a live event at the NEC discussing the PA2023 and how well it is going.

Well, maybe how well it is going to go...

I shall be running a handful of short sessions, and be around on the day.  I will also be hoping to learn from the panolpy of other presenters.

Did I mention that it is free if you are public sector or VCSE?

Hope to see you there.

Full details (which are still developing) are here.

Tesco - late payment scandal

So Tesco have been rapped on the knuckles for late payment - see BBC here.

Almost a year ago I was writing about this here. 

Let's be clear - this was a deliberate breaking of agreed contracts by a large customer taking advantage of smaller suppliers.  Tesco are claiming they are undertaking "reorganising, refocusing and retraining our teams".  This is disengenous.  They knew exactly what they were doing, and they did it as a deliberate policy.  If they are serious about the apologies they need to sack the managers responsible immediately - all the way up to the board.  Don't pretend they have already gone, or did not know what was going on.  Fraud is a hard word but what else do you call signing contracts you have no intention of honouring?

People could have (and may have) lost jobs and businesses so that Tesco managers could claim inflated profits and cashflow, and falsely claim bonuses.  Those bonuses must be recovered, and the victim businesses compensated.

In the end the accouting scandal of which this is part might cost Tesco £500m in fines.  Was it worth it?

Cabinet Office new faces - a correction

Apologies for getting it wrong in the earlier post - Oliver Letwin is taking overall responsibility for the Cabinet Office, but the Paymaster General will be Matthew Hancock.  I have edited the previous post to take account of this - you can see the original text score through.

Some of my comment remain the same - it is an important role - and some changes. 

One of the comments I made I now have to backtrack on, and will worry about.  Mr Hancock is clearly young and ambitious.  He has experience on the Public Account Committee, and been Minister of State for Business and Enterprise.  These should stand him in good stead overseeing public procurement.  But will he see this as a stepping stone to greater roles, rather than an important role in its own right (as Francis Maude clearly did)?  How he sees the role will have an impact on how he carries it out.  It is only natural that if he is focused on promotion he will look for opportunities to demonstrate that he should be promoted - that may lead to shorter term, riskier and more "flashy" initiatives which make a splash rather than longer term structural change which tends to be slow, undramatic and often underappreciated.

There will also inevitably be jokes about "Hancock's half hour", which will go over the head of anyone younger than 50 and make those of us above that think wistfully of "the lad himself".

Good luck to all of them.

New faces at the Cabinet Office

So we now know that Francis Maude has been followed by Oliver Letwin, a recognisable name

if not one from the recent front pages. the Rt. Hon Matthew Hancock as Paymaster General and Minister for the Cabinet Office, which will be overseen by Oliver Letwin.   I hardly expected George Osborne to decide he preferred the Cabinet Office to the Treasury.

Of course we have to wait to see Mr. Letwin's Mr. Hancock's priorities, but we do know from his past that he is keen to reduce bureaucracy and to drive down prices.  To be fair, I don't know of anyone who is in favour of the opposite.  He is reported to have said that suppliers need to feel a bit of fear in order for the public sector to get value and innovation: that sounds like a soundbite, and the interesting thing is what it would mean in practice.  The Public Contract Regulations 2015 are still bedding in, and the Cabinet Office will play a big role in how they are interpreted in the UK.

A potentially positive thing is that Mr. Letwin has been around the block a few times, and so should know how Whitehall operates, and hopefully will see this as a real and important role rather than a stepping stone to roles.

So, welcome and good luck.

UK Public Procurement - change is coming

Just a reminder that Francis Maude is standing down at the election in 2 weeks, and so there will be changes at the Cabinet Office, and therefore potentially throughout public sector procurement in England (at least).   His swansong will have been the requirement for all contracts below the OJEU threshold but above £10 000 (Central government) or £25 000 (sub-central government) to be conducted using a single stage open process (i.e. no PQQ stage).    I have wittered on before about how I am far from convinced that this is a good idea (especially for Buyers, but also for suppliers) so let's leave it there.

Mr Maude spent a long time at Cabinet Office, and was notably interested in Procurement as a tool for government policy.  His replacement, of whatever political flavour, may share his zeal - or just see it as a stepping stone to a "real" job at HM Treasury.  Whichever, we need to be on the look out for any indicated change of direction.

Not least of all because (as again pointed out by Peter Smith and SpendMatters) Contracting Authorities have an obligation under the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act 2015
 to "have regard to any guidance for the time being in force under this section".

So don't forget to keep reading the PPNs (Procurement Policy Notes) from the Cabinet Office.