Extra: What can be done to improve government procurement?

Inside Briefing with the Institute for Government

Institute for Government

News, Politics, Government

4.6 • 252 Ratings

🗓️ 19 September 2024

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The Post Office and PPE VIP-lane scandals have put government procurement in the headlines – and not in a good way. But with the government spending almost £400bn a year on goods, works and services from businesses and charities, what can be done to stop things going wrong? Well, the Labour government has an opportunity – and a big one – to do things differently, with new legislation – in the form of the Procurement Act – kicking in. But what will this mean for ministers, civil servants and businesses? What opportunities will it bring? What risks might it create? The impact is not entirely clear. Drawing on a new IfG report, published in partnership with Tussell and AutogenAI, this special episode of Inside Briefing tells you everything you need to know about the scale of public procurement, where billions of pounds are spent, why failures happen, how accountability in procurement currently works (or doesn’t) and where it could be improved. Emma Norris presents. With IfG programme director Nick Davies, DEFRA chief commercial officer Einav Ben-Yehuda, the i paper’s senior report Ben Gartside, and Gus Tugendhat, Founder of Tussell. Produced by Candice McKenzie Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello and welcome to this special IFG podcast. I'm Emma Norris Deputy Director at the Institute.
0:16.2	The government spends more than £350 billion each year buying goods, works and services from businesses
0:22.4	and charities. But in recent years, government procurement has made headlines for the wrong
0:26.6	reasons, with scandals like the wrongful prosecution of post office workers due to the faulty
0:31.1	horizon computer system or the VIP Lane PPE procurement in the pandemic. So what can
0:36.7	be done and can the new government do
0:38.6	things differently? Well, it has an opportunity and it's quite a big one. The Procurement Act will
0:43.2	bring in simplified regulations, greater transparency and an easier way to exclude firms from bidding.
0:49.0	But there are also risks to this new public sector procurement regime. The new requirements
0:53.2	imposed by this legislation
0:54.4	could mean more complexity and more demands on civil servants and businesses. And the impact
0:59.9	of all that isn't yet entirely clear. So to understand it all, there is no better podcast to
1:05.1	listen to than Inside Briefing. In partnership with Tustle and Autogen AI, the Institute has published
1:10.4	a new report setting out the scale
1:12.1	of public procurement, how accountability in procurement currently works or indeed doesn't work,
1:17.6	how the Procurement Act will change this and opportunities for reform. And that's what we're
1:22.5	going to be talking about today. So to discuss these issues, I've got a brilliant panel with me.
1:27.4	Ein of Ben Yehuda is the
1:28.8	interim DG Group Chief Operating Officer and Chief Commercial Officer at Depra. Ben Gartside is a senior
1:34.8	reporter at the I Paper. Gus Tuganhat is founder of Tussle. And Nick Davies is
1:40.2	program director here at IFG and the co-author of our new report on procurement.
1:45.1	So let's start off talking about the scale of procurement, just how big is it?
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in -193 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Institute for Government, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Institute for Government and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.