In brief:
- UK public agencies spend roughly £120bn per year on procurement contracts.
- In 2020, a larger share of contracts went to companies that donate to political parties.
- The media has highlighted a range of other issues with government procurement in 2020, noting that many contracts were awarded without competition, and the details of contract awards were published late.
- Our analysis suggests these issues were not specific to 2020. They are long-running features of UK government procurement.
Government procurement was heavily criticised in 2020. Money was wasted on defective goods, contracts were awarded without competition and contract winners had links to the Government.
To understand how many of these issues were specific to procurement during the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve built a large dataset of UK government contracts. Readers can explore the dataset using our dashboard. The remainder of this article picks out some headline findings.
We’ll start with some context. UK public agencies spend a lot on procurement contracts; roughly £120bn per year.* That’s more than what government receives in VAT, corporation tax or council tax.
Central government departments normally award around 27% of procurement contracts. Their share increased to 40% in 2020, mostly because of the large PPE contracts arranged by the Department of Health:
There was another notable change in 2020. Companies that donated to political parties or MPs won more contracts than normal. Though their share of total procurement is still small (at around 2%):
There was also a slight increase in contracts awarded without competition. But this was common practice in previous years, too:
Public bodies are required to publish details within 30 days of awarding a contract. Matt Hancock was criticised for missing that deadline in 2020. But he was not alone; that deadline was regularly missed:
It’s been alleged that contracts were awarded to companies with little experience. That’s true. But 2020 didn’t see an increase in the proportion of contracts awarded to young or new companies:
Taken together, this suggests 2020 was actually a typical year for procurement. It is normal for the government to spend hundreds of billions, award contracts without competition and publish details late.
We plan to do plenty more with this dataset. This article is just a taster. Follow-us on twitter for updates.
* In total, they spend more than this amount – reportedly £290bn – with private sector companies. But not all of that expenditure is through publicly-notifiable contracts.