I agree with the objective behind the noble Lord’s Amendment 245A. There is a need for this Bill to ensure that multiple contracting authorities may join to award a framework. Frameworks can result in significant savings, financially and in time, and they say that time is money. This is particularly the case where they are put in place for the benefit of more than one contracting authority, for example by centralised procurement authorities.
To that end, Clause 10 provides for contracting authorities to carry out procurements jointly and for centralised procurement authorities to put in place arrangements for the benefit of other contracting authorities. This enables them to delegate their obligations to run lawful procurements to centralised procurement authorities, in their capacity as specialists, or to jointly procure with them and remain responsible, together with their procurement partners, for the award of any resulting contract. The noble Lord will wish to look carefully at that, but I do not think that his amendment is necessary.
Amendments 247 and 248, tabled by my noble friend Lord Lansley, seek to add additional requirements for the award of contracts under frameworks, without a further competitive process. The first of these, a system based on the suppliers’ ranking in the competition for the award of the framework—the noble Lord talked of a cascade; we have talked of ranking—is certainly one mechanism by which contracts can be awarded under a framework without a competition. However, this is only one selection mechanism, and there are others. They might include a “taxi rank” system, where the next supplier on the list gets the work, or the supplier chosen could simply be the cheapest for that good or service, which contracting authorities might consider to be more appropriate for their requirements
on that occasion. There is nothing in the Bill preventing contracting authorities from including rankings in a framework, but there is no need to require this for all frameworks.
The second requirement is to allow for the provision of additional information by suppliers in order to make an award without a competition. In this connection, I draw noble Lords’ attention to Clause 44(6), which allows contracting authorities to ask for additional information to ensure that call off competitions are effective. Sorry, that is a bit repetitive. This seems preferable to receiving large amounts of potentially unnecessary or irrelevant information and adding burdens to the award process, which we are all keen to avoid.
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Amendment 249 seeks to remove the ability of a contracting authority or a centralised procurement authority to charge suppliers fees when they win business through a framework. The reason for that is, for example, to cover the cost of setting up and managing a framework. The Bill is changing the arrangements for this kind of approach. For the first time, it restricts such charges to a fixed percentage of the estimated value of the contract awarded and requires that to be set out in the framework. Fees chargeable to suppliers will be published when the framework notice is published under the Bill’s transparency provisions. There is no “pay to play”. Fees can be charged only where a supplier is awarded work under the framework. That is a very important point: if you get the work, you pay the fee; if you do not get the work, you do not pay the fee.
I respectfully request that Amendments 245A and 247 to 249 are not pressed. I will move the government amendments in my name.