Boris Johnson takes aim at procurement once more.

Boris Johnson is once again talking about procurement:

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The obvious figure Johnson is missing here is that 97% or so of procurement is spent with British companies, so the upside of the measure is pretty much non-existent. However, any move to tilt the playing field in favour of British companies will trigger some significant downsides. First, obviously access to the EU public procurement market would be foreclosed and this would predominantly affect those companies with an international outlook. In other words, it would affect directly the “global Britain” type of companies.

Second, the UK has recently signed an agreement to join the Agreement on Government Procurement (GPA) as soon as it leaves the EU. This includes a set of commitments from the UK and naturally the assumption the current rules (which already are GPA compliant) are not rolled back. If they are, then the UK would surely have to renegotiate its participation in the agreement. In any event, I remain of the opinion that while the UK wants to stay within the GPA framework the flexibility to simply change procurement rules to its heart content is very limited.