Supplier Exclusion And Debarment Under The Procurement Act

One of the most significant areas of change in the Act, which is likely to be of particular interest to suppliers to the public and utility sectors, is the question of supplier exclusion and debarment.

Following concerns raised by respondents to the consultation on the Green Paper that the current legal framework for mandatory exclusion of suppliers is unclear and confusing, with a number of ambiguities and inconsistencies, the Government has taken the opportunity in the Act to implement a wider refresh of the rules on supplier exclusion. The result is a much clearer but overall broader and more extensive framework for supplier exclusion, including for the first time a central debarment list, which presents potentially significant risk for suppliers bidding for Government and utility contracts in England and Wales, with attendant possibility for legal challenges in this area.