Report

Procure and simple: a proportionate approach to public procurement

This report from UK think tank Re:State reveals a procurement system which has become too focused on compliance with complex rules and bureaucracy.

The Government spends £400 billion a year procuring goods and services, but regularly fails to secure value for the taxpayer from that spending. Public procurement is rife with projects which are late, under-deliver, and are over-budget. Some projects are outsourced which shouldn’t be, and others are never even started because the complex and costly procurement processes stop them being tendered.

Re:State’s report reveals a procurement system which has become too focused on compliance with complex rules and bureaucracy, at the expense of its core goals: getting good value at affordable prices. A “practice-legislation” gap has grown from “folklore” about the processes which procurement professionals should follow, entirely detached both from their core responsibilities under legislation.

For companies, the public sector is an increasingly unattractive place to work. The way the procurement market is designed effectively prices out exactly the kind of smaller, more entrepreneurial start-ups and scaleups who government should want to be working with, who will make the market more innovative and competitive in the long run. Meanwhile, the Government’s focus solely on areas like insourcing, SMEs, and driving wider social goals through procurement is missing an opportunity to focus on the core job – buying better goods and services and getting them at a better price.

There is an immense opportunity for the public, if the Government can simplify procurement, and focus increasing competition in public procurement markets by crowding in more innovative companies.