Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the answer by Baroness Twycross on 27 January (HL3974), whether contracting authorities that fail to publish pipeline notices under section 93 of the Procurement Act 2023 are subject to financial penalties; and if not, what consideration has been given to introducing such penalties to encourage compliance.

The Procurement Act 2023 does not contain financial penalties for failure to publish pipeline notices. There are sufficient remedies and processes in place to manage compliance and the Cabinet Office considers it would not be good use of public funds to introduce such a measure. As per the previous answer (HL3974), Cabinet Office is establishing the Procurement Review Unit which will play a big part in procurement oversight and any non-compliance will be monitored and potentially investigated in detail.