The UK has been in a long process of procurement law reform that was due to kick in on 28 October 2024, following a 6-month ‘go live’ notice for the Procurement Act 2023. Today, a 4-month delay has been announced and the new UK procurement rules will only enter into force on 24 February 2025 (barring any further delays).
This announcement follows speculation (on LinkedIn) that a delay was necessary because the digital platform underpinning the new system would not have been ready on time. However, the reasons given by Cabinet Office point in a different direction. In the statement, the UK Government has indicated that, under the Procurement Act 2023,
… the previous administration (the Conservative government) published a National Procurement Policy Statement [this one] to which contracting authorities will have to have regard. But this Statement does not meet the challenge of applying the full potential of public procurement to deliver value for money, economic growth, and social value. [The Government has] therefore taken the decision to begin the vital work of producing a new National Procurement Policy Statement that clearly sets out this Government’s priorities for public procurement in support of our missions.
It is crucial that the new regime in the Procurement Act goes live with a bold and ambitious Statement that drives delivery of the Government’s missions, and therefore, I am proposing a short delay to the commencement of the Act to February 2025 so this work can be completed.
To be honest, I do not find this justification very convincing — whether it is a curtain to cover problems with the digital platform or not. This is because the National Procurement Policy Statement (NPPS) is bound to play a very minor role in procurement practice, given the awkward position it has within the set of duties arising from the Procurement Act 2023—as I explore in detail here. Moreover, the NPPS is by design bound to change in the future (especially when there is a change of government), but future changes to the NPPS will not trigger the sort of pause that is being implemented now. And, finally, pushing back the entry into force of the Procurement Act 2023 and the associated NPPS leaves is in the current default, where the previous iteration of the NPPS (this one, also by a Conservative government—I know, confusing, so let’s call it the ‘old’ NPPS) is supposed to be guiding procurement decisions. So, stopping the entry into force of the new NPPS to leave the old NPPS is not precisely going to create any change in policy and practice between now and February 2025 (even assuming the NPPS has policy delivery potential).
For me, this move and delay is concerning because it shows how the incoming Government places excessive hopes on procurement, and the NPPS in particular, as a policy delivery tool. More than ever, this stresses the need to have a serious conversation about the limits of procurement law and the need for hard law in many areas (starting with tackling climate change and supporting a just environmental transition) if we are to unlock the change we need at the required pace.