The Procurement Bill was introduced to Parliament yesterday, beginning the next stage on our journey to a new procurement law regime and giving us our first sight of what will become the Act of Parliament governing public procurement.
The Bill is 122 pages long so readers will forgive us if we have not yet digested it fully! However on first glance we can see that it implements and develops in detail the proposals the government outlined in its Green Paper on transforming public procurement and in its Response to that consultation.
The Bill will pass through several stages on its journey into the statute books - the next stage is a second reading in the House of Lords on 25th May. There will be several drafts of the Bill produced, as comments and amendments are incorporated, so the final version we end up with could move some distance from the version published yesterday.
The Bill is not expected to become law until at least 2023, and the government has promised a six month transition period to allow authorities and suppliers to prepare.
You can keep up to date with procurement law reform on our dedicated procurement portal Reform page where you can follow the progress of the Bill and access all our latest briefings, vlogs and webinars on procurement law reform.