Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, how many suppliers his Department has excluded from procurement on the grounds of (a) fraud, (b) corruption and (c) other grounds under the Public Contract Regulations 2015 from 2015 to 2022.

As part of its standard procurement processes, the Ministry of Defence (MOD) requires potential suppliers to confirm whether they have been convicted in the last five years of certain offences set out in the Public Contracts Regulations 2015. These include offences relating to fraud and corruption.

Since Financial Year 2015-16, the MOD has placed over 14,000 contracts, and decisions on exclusion are made case-by-case. Information on how many suppliers have been excluded from procurement is therefore not held centrally and could only be provided at disproportionate cost.