The UK Procurement Act 2023 is due to come into force in the latter half of 2024. It will introduce the largest shift in UK procurement objectives since the introduction of the Social Value Act (2012) and apply to most sectors in the UK.
The Government Commercial Function has set out a number of “knowledge drops” for authorities, suppliers, including small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) and voluntary, community and social enterprises (VCSEs). These provide a useful to help relevant stakeholders get to grips with the new legislation.
The Act specifically stets out the strategic shift from Most Advantageous Economic Tendering (MEAT) to Most Advantageous Tendering (MAT) in public authority contract bidding. In short, this builds upon earlier legislation to put an emphasis on the delivery of social value, which can include employment, training and apprenticeships and environmental benefits, over economic cost.
In principle this core aim is a welcome step in the use of government spending to create greater social benefits. However, in our ongoing research the Activating Employers project has identified considerable shortcomings in the way public contracting is both monitored and enforced. Measurement of public contracting outcomes in the area of employment too often come down to basic metrics of the numbers of people who gain work entry, not how long employment lasts for or the quality of work for employees. One reason for this unsatisfactory outcome is that failure of contractors to comply with social procurement objectives rarely results in any kind of punitive measure such as exclusion from future government contracts (debarment).
The Procurement Act sets out several steps to strengthen contracting authorities power to debar suppliers:
It remains to be seen how robust the above measures will be and how they will translate into protecting, or even improving, labour standards for employees. It is hoped they can go some way into improving supplier performance and ensure better employment outcomes for employees connected with the public contracting sector.
The University of Brighton School of Business and Law played host to the first advisory board meeting of the Activating Employers project this week. It was the first opportunity for the project team and the board members to meet face to face and discuss the future direction of the project.
Activating Employers team members Dr Anne Daguerre and Dr Sean Vincent, both of Brighton University, made the first public presentation of preliminary findings of the Activating Employers project at the Social Policy Association annual conference held at the University of Nottingham.
