Now that we don't have to follow OJEU rules, let's make procurement work for design

摘要

There has been a general welcome for the government's announcement of post-Brexit procurement reform, now that we are unbound from OJEU rules. Some Remnants want to fight yesteryear's political battles, claiming that reform could have happened under the old rules anyway. This scarcely matters. The fact is that, for the first time in decades, we have an opportunity to rewrite the method by which public sector procurement takes place, without being told what to do by Brussels. Now we are free to make our own mistakes or, to take a more optimistic view, to rewrite our rules in the light of prolonged experience of a relatively complicated regime which the UK, as usual, interpreted rather strictly, often to our own disadvantage.