Ulster Unionist Finance & Personnel Committee member, Roy Beggs MLA has called for a complete overhaul of public procurement processes following the findings of a report to the Assembly on Collaborative Procurement and Aggregated Demand of common goods across the public sector. 

The East Antrim MLA said:

“Public procurement is an important component of the Northern Ireland economy given that it equates to over £3 billion a year in central and local government. Effective use of this money is therefore vital as we seek to rebuild and rebalance our economy. This report to the Assembly by the Northern Ireland Audit Office shows that there is also a need for progress in collaboration policies as well as more ambitious targets for savings from aggregation. Although, this needs to be balanced with maintaining the development of small and medium sized enterprises who we believe public procurement processes should be specifically tailored towards.  Too often large contracts are not good value.  Successful bidders often subcontract their work to smaller companies, and then take their profits elsewhere.’

‘‘Public procurement is governed by the Procurement Board which is Chaired by the Finance Minister, Sammy Wilson, and this report gives a damning indictment of his performance in this regard. It states that little progress has been made in collaboration policies and this has led to an unacceptable lack of efficiency savings. Further to that, little basic management information was available within the Central Procurement Directorate (CPD) whose role it is to develop and establish the policy framework and best practice public procurement for the wider public sector in Northern Ireland. The Northern Ireland target for savings from aggregation were also low and unambitious compared with the rest of the UK.’’

“Finance Minister, Sammy Wilson was due to make a statement to the Assembly today, updating Members on Public Procurement. However, that statement has now been withdrawn.  One could draw from this that it is due to his embarrassment that the findings of the Northern Ireland Audit Office report show so many inefficiencies within public procurement.’

“At our Party conference on Saturday, we outlined the need for total reform of public procurement in Northern Ireland.   Despite the Finance and Personnel Committee producing a comprehensive report in 2010 following their inquiry into Public Procurement in Northern Ireland, Northern Ireland still lags behind Scotland, who are legislating through a Sustainable Procurement Bill, and Wales, through their ‘Opening Doors’ Strategy. It is clear that we are yet to see delivery on the scale which is necessary.

Some examples of where reform is also needed include encouraging joint ventures between MSME’s, breaking contracts into smaller and more manageable parts, facilitating secondments from the private sector into the public sector to increase understanding of procurement processes or simply improving access to information through the public procurement online ‘Portal’.