Corruption is a particular risk in public procurement and can cause serious loss of public funds as well as undermining trust in public spending.
Ensuring that conflicts of interest do not send contracts to cronies of public officials or politicians, and that corrupt companies are effectively excluded from bidding for public contracts – known as debarment – is essential for protecting taxpayers’ money and the integrity of public procurement. The threat of being excluded from public procurement creates strong incentives for companies to comply with the law and put good policies in place to prevent wrongdoing. Surveys have shown that losing the ability to bid for public contracts is one of the sanctions that companies fear most.
We research and develop recommendations for how to protect the UK’s procurement system from conflicts of interest and how the UK’s debarment and suspension regime in public procurement can be robustly implemented.
UK needs much stronger rules to prevent new chumocracy scandals. Post-Brexit procurement reform is an opportunity to create a tough national strategy drawing on best practice from US & Canada.28 January 2021
Last week’s much anticipated National Audit Office report into the government’s handling of emergency procurement during COVID-19 effectively corroborated widespread allegations of cronyism in the dishing out of PPE contracts....
16th November On Friday 13th November, Spotlight on Corruption wrote to the government’s procurement body, the Crown Commercial Service, asking it to review whether the accountancy firm Ernst & Young...
Spotlight blog by Daniel Beizsley on whether conflicts of interest are being managed properly during the COVID-19 crisis and the curious case of NHSX.
What’s the issue? Corruption is particularly common in public procurement. Of the foreign bribery cases prosecuted under the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention, 57% involved bribes to obtain public contracts. The problem exists...
