North Wales Assembly Member Mark Isherwood has sponsored and spoke at an event today highlighting the need for a radical overhaul of public procurement.
The 3SC event, ‘The Role of the Third Sector in Delivering Public Sector Contracts in Wales’, was held in the Assembly and saw the launch of 3SC’s position paper ‘The Crisis in Public Sector Contracting and How to cure It - in Wales’, highlighting some of the challenges that the third sector face in relation to public sector procurement and some thoughts on how these could be addressed.
3SC are a UK wide social enterprise established in 2009 to bid for public and other contracts, and provide other services which have a clear social impact, harnessing the power of the third sector to deliver these contracts via organisations that otherwise lose out.
Speaking at the event, Mr Isherwood said:
“This paper argues that public procurement needs an overhaul and needs to recognise the value that smaller (third sector) organisations can bring.
“The delivery of public services is a difficult and competitive marketplace, dominated by large commercial organisations that can lack the person-centred and inclusive approach to public services that the Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise (VCSE) sector excels at delivering. 3SC gives these VCSE organisations a chance to compete for, and ultimately deliver, such contracts.
“Outsource to a Carillion or insource to the local direct labour organisation or in house team, the outcome is the same – a monopoly whether public or private.
“Their public procurement report states “There are many small organisations out there, particularly in the third sector, who deserve a chance to show how they can generate more positive social outcomes out of government contracts. However, they can’t make the cut – excluded because they do not meet financial and application hurdles irrespective of what they can deliver in relation to outcomes for the customer”.
“In calling for a radical overhaul of Public procurement, the report concludes by arguing “for more diverse delivery arrangements – delivery arrangements which are no longer dominated by size. Even where size is important and the contract needs one prime or lead contractor to manage the relationship, there should still be a requirement for supply chain diversity….” adding that “achieving world class procurement requires a fundamental rethink.
“The Third Sector is an important provider of employment in Wales – 2017 statistics suggest that some 116,600 people are employed in third sector organisations in Wales, watering the roots of people and neighbourhoods rather than seeing money wash over them.
“The ambition must be for procurement to choose the best providers not the biggest – diversity must underpin solutions. If we want to excel as a country then we have to encourage every service contract to be as good as possible. This will rarely be the case if it is always left to one provider”.