Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs: Procurement

(asked on 16th November 2016) - View Source

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many times her Department has (a) terminated a contract, (b) imposed a penalty and (c) denied permission for a company to tender on the grounds of grave professional misconduct since November 2015.


Answered by
George Eustice Portrait
George Eustice
This question was answered on 24th November 2016

The Public Contracts Regulations (2015) include a mandatory requirement for contracting authorities to exclude companies from public contracts where they have been convicted of certain criminal offences including conspiracy, corruption, bribery and fraud. Potential bidders may also be excluded from participating in the tender process on certain grounds at the discretion of the contracting authority. These grounds include circumstances where they have been convicted of an offence (not attracting mandatory exclusion) relating to the conduct of his business or profession; or been found guilty of grave professional misconduct proven by any means that the contracting authority can demonstrate

Defra has terminated five contracts since 1 November 2015 for the reasons of savings, renegotiation of contract, change of supplier name and consolidation of several contracts into one.

Defra does not impose penalties but uses service credits to ensure compliance of contracts. The majority of contracts are monitored by Defra’s operation teams. Consequently it is not possible to determine how often these measures are employed.

No potential supplier has ever identified themselves as being guilty of gross professional misconduct during the tendering process so there has been no necessity to deny permission to tender on those grounds.

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