Initial Comments on the UK’s Procurement Bill: A Lukewarm Assessment

Abstract

On 11 May 2022, the Cabinet Office introduced the much-awaited Procurement Bill, which is meant to transform the UK’s procurement rulebook post-Brexit. In this paper I offer some initial comments on the Bill and related documents, including: (i) the economic justification in its impact assessment; (ii) some general comments on legislative technique and the quality of the Bill and its Explanatory Notes; (iii) some observations on what may have not been carried over from the Transforming Public Procurement consultation and government response; (iv) a mapping of important aspects of procurement regulation that the Bill does not cover and will thus have to wait for secondary legislation and/or guidance; (v) some general considerations on the unclear impact of different wording for ‘terms of art’, including their interpretation; and (vi) fifty selected issues I have spotted in my first reading of the Bill. I close with some considerations on the difficulty of ensuring a sufficient fix along the legislative process.

Keywords: Public procurement, reform, deregulation, Procurement Bill, transforming public procurement, Brexit

JEL Classification: H57, K23, K42, L59