UK Procurement Bill: Pursuing Simple and Accountable Procurement

Alistair Maughan authored an article for Thomson Reuters’ Westlaw Today discussing how legislation before the United Kingdom’s House of Commons aimed at simplifying the government procurement process may affect supply contracts.

According to Alistair, one key change in the new procurement law is replacing the existing five competitive tendering processes with two new processes.

“The first new option is a single stage tendering process without restrictions on who can submit tenders, and the second option will constitute any other competitive tendering procedures that the contracting authority considers appropriate,” he wrote. “While option two lets authorities design more bespoke tendering processes, it also runs the risk of allowing tendering processes to become more complex and inconsistent, and therefore also more time-consuming and expensive. Under the current EU-derived procurement regime, authorities have less flexibility to design their own bid process, but bidders have more certainty as to the type of process that they will need to follow.”

Read the full article.