Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office, which recommendations of the Boardman Review are yet to be implemented.

The Cabinet Office commissioned Nigel Boardman in September 2020 to undertake a review of departmental procurement. This review made 28 specific recommendations, which we have accepted in full. The review was, however, specifically focused on a small number of contracts within the Government Communications Service business area and so while we are embedding the Boardman recommendations widely across the CO, many were and are already standard practice in many areas of the department and across government.

As at 5 July 2021, the department has completed 24 of the 28 recommendations (86%). The remaining four recommendations are by their nature dependent on sourcing and on-boarding additional systems / resources. All four are in progress and expected to be completed by the end of the calendar year.

The four outstanding recommendations are:

11 – Single point of contact centrally recorded for every contract

16 – Centralised contract register for the department

20 – Log of declarations of interest

21 – Data protection training complete for owners of the declaration logs