Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of the Public Contracts Regulation 2015 in ensuring that the public sector treats economic operators equally and without discrimination.

The EU Public Procurement Directives contain detailed procedural rules to facilitate the Single Market, including an obligation to treat economic operators equally and without discrimination. This is transposed at Article 18 of the Public Contracts Regulations 2015, and there are penalties contained in a separate scheme of remedies directives for non-compliance. The UK has transposed all directives fully.

The European Commission publishes studies that evaluate and assess various aspects of the impact of the directives, and can be viewed at the following link: