Procurement scrutinised

摘要

The way the public sector procures what it wants has been changing in recent times and it looks set to continue. Rather than pay a fee for the delivery of a service - an input - contracts are aimed much more at purchasing some sort of output. This has been termed payment by results (PbR). When it comes to interventions that are about social outcomes, the natural move has been to have payment linked to the achievement of those outcomes. Rather than pay people who work with the unemployed, pay them only if they get them into work. But, for all their appeal in principle, such contracts also have the potential to raise problems. Many of these have surfaced in the Work Programme which uses PbR extensively.