Public Procurement
Back in 2020 (and 2021) I went out on a limb stating that when it come down to the pandemic preparation in early 2020, ie before March 23rd the UK government did not take the risk of Covid seriously enough and did not act when it should. This was (and
Public Procurement
The NAO has just published a report on the Department of Health and Social Care accounts for 2021-22 and it contains a number of interesting bits of information connected with COVID-19 procurement in the UK: “ ” The reduction in value is to be expected as the prices on these items came
Public Procurement
The last couple of weeks have been consumed with news about Baroness Mone and her role in securing PPE contracts for MedPro (here, here, here, here, here). Most of the discussion has (rightly) been about the ultimate beneficiary of MedPro and associated tax implications. For me the interest on MedPro&
Public Procurement
Having spent most of 2020 criticising the procurement response of the UK Government to the covid-19 pandemic, those decisions are now coming home to roost. Back in February we found out that £8.7B of the £12.1B of PPE purchased in 2020-21 was 'lost' and now we
Public Procurement
The yearly report from the Department for Health and Social Care makes for grim reading in what concerns Covid-related procurement, with the headline figure being the loss of £8.7 billion of the £12.1 billion of PPE spent in the financial year of 2020-21. Over half of the loss
Public Procurement
I have posited many times in this blog (and elsewhere) that it is very possible a significant number of contracts awarded without competition in the UK as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic are illegal since the provisions of Regulation 32(2)(c) are not fully met. The key issue
Public Procurement
Yesterday, Dominic Cummings made an appearance in the Commons to shoot in every direction bar himself. That in itself is not really surprising, but let's look at what he said about procurement: “In spring 2020 you had a situation where the Department of Health was just a smoking
Public Procurement
As promised yesterday, here's the second part of the fisking of the UK Government response to the NAO report on public procurement, focused on the "claims" section of its response: “ ” This is, frankly, pure obfuscation by means of mixing up completely different things together in the
Public Procurement
I have been looking a bit into disaster procurement to get my head around as to why so much of the COVID-19 related procurement seems terrible. Had the chance to read Schwartz Katrina's lessons for ongoing US procurement reform efforts and was floored to see so many similarities
Public Procurement
While the UK comes to grips now with the lack of PPE, in Ireland the situation is somewhat different and the reason for that is this: “ ” Sometime in March, Ireland struck a huge deal with China for 13x the usual annual spend on PPE. I do not know the exact
Public Procurement
Most of the focus over the last month or so in the blog has been on the procurement of ventilators by the UK Government (#ventilatorgate) and how, in my view, the rules have been broken. There is, however, another elephant in the room and that is the personal protection equipment
Public Procurement
As mentioned on Friday’s post, the UK did not take part on the joint procurement set up by the European Commission for COVID-19 medical supplies, including that of ventilators. The Government's official response is that there was a miscommunication between the parties and that no invitation to