Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 31
31
Accepted
Diverse metrics available to assess public procurement transformation success.
Conclusion
On how it might know whether efforts to transform public procurement have been successful, the GCF told us that government could look at the number of challenges they get and the number of disputes. The GCF noted that alternatively government could also look at the KPI performance or social value criteria and whether they are seeing that those are being usefully applied to generate more than just price and quality for the contract itself. GCF reflected that a national procurement policy statement is permitted by the new 48 C&AG’s Report para 1.5 49 Q 71 50 Q 71 51 Committee of Public Accounts, Transforming rehabilitation: progress review, Ninety-Fourth Report of Session 2017–19, HC 1747, 3 May 2019, recommendation 4 52 Qq 74–75 53 Q 75 16 Competition in public procurement Procurement Act, which will allow the government of the day to say: “of all the social value criteria that we have on our published menu, we would like procurements to focus on the environment”, for example, or training, or local employment, as determined by the government of the day. The GCF will be able to look at those and see how many of those criteria have cropped up in local procurements.54 Building commercial expertise across government
Government Response Summary
The government will implement new legal requirements in Spring 2024 for contracting authorities to upload procurement information, including KPIs, to a central digital platform. It also anticipates publishing the first statutory National Procurement Policy Statement later in 2024 to set strategic priorities.
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government
Accepted
Contracting authorities will have clear legal requirements to upload information on procurements to the central digital platform within certain timescales, this includes publishing contract award notices for above threshold contracts (those generally above £213,000), contract details for contracts over £5 million, Key Performance Indicators for contracts over £5 million. This list is not exhaustive and will be achieved via the submission of notices within the system - simply put, if a contract authority does not upload a particular notice, it will be in breach of statutory requirements in a way that is not the case now. The requirements for notices will be set out via secondary legislation, expected to be laid in Spring 2024. The Cabinet Office will publish a range of guidance notes and provide learning and development materials setting out these requirements. As part of the Procurement Act 2023, the government has powers to publish a National Procurement Policy Statement (NPPS), to which all contracting authorities must have regard. This will provide the government of the day an opportunity to set out its strategic priorities to which it expects procurement to contribute and may include subjects such as driving innovation, creating jobs and tackling climate change. It is anticipated that the first statutory NPPS will be in place later in 2024.