On 11 May 2022, the Government introduced the much-anticipated Procurement Bill (the Bill) into the House of Lords where it received its first reading.
The Bill follows an extensive consultation process on procurement reform following the UK's withdrawal from the EU. The reforms in the Bill are significant and wide-ranging and follow on from the December 2020 Green Paper on Transforming Public Procurement (the Green Paper) and the Government's response to the consultation on the Green Paper, published in December 2021 (the Response).
The Bill represents the Government's post-Brexit approach to the proposed procurement regime. There are significant linguistic and stylistic differences in the Office of the Parliamentary Council's drafting, compared to what we are used to under the current Public Contracts Regulations 2015 (which represent a copy-out approach of the European Directive into domestic law).
The Bill will extend to contracting authorities in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, but Scotland has decided to remain outside the framework of the Bill. We have put together a summary, please click here to read it.
