Webinars by Professor Sue Arrowsmith to support and promote feedback on the Government's 2020 Green Paper on public procurement reform attract thousands of participants

Professor Sue Arrowsmith has presented a series of webinars during 2021 on the Government’s Green Paper, “Transforming Public Procurement” to help promote and support feedback from industry in response to the formal consultation on the Green Paper launched by Government. The various webinars, hosted by law firms and industry and some of which have offered open public access,  have been attended by thousands of participants in total (with the largest attracting more than 800 attendees), coming from regulatory authorities, the public sector, utility companies, suppliers and academics.  The consultation has now closed and will inform the proposed legislation to reform the UK’s regulatory system for public procurement, which is being overhauled in the light of the new freedom in regulatory policy conferred by Brexit.

Professor Arrowsmith is ideally placed to analyse and lead discussions on the topic, having played a prominent role on the Government’s Expert panel, chaired by the relevant Ministers for the Cabinet Office (Oliver Dowden and Lord Agnew), which was appointed to advise on the Green Paper. The Green Paper reflects closely many of the detailed recommendations made in her previous publications on the topic, proposing significant simplification of the system,  streamlining of competitive award procedures and greater control of direct awards – including in emergency situations, following the experience of Covid-19 – including through open contracting and other measures to promote transparency. As well as drawing on earlier work, in analysing the proposed changes for emergency procurement and the rationale for those changes her presentations have drawn on research for the forthcoming book Public Procurement Regulation in (a) Crisis? Global Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic (Hart Publishing), co-edited by Professor Arrowsmith with Dr Luke Butler and Professor Annamaria La Chimia of the PPRG and Professor Christopher Yukins of George Washington University (view more details), in particular the chapter (co-authored with Luke Butler) on UK procurement in the pandemic.

The webinars in 2020 include four events hosted by the law firms Trowers Hamlins, Bird & Bird, Addleshaw Goddard and Sharpe Pritchard; an event hosted  by the supplier organisation the Red Review; and an event hosted jointly by the industry service-provider Achilles Information and the law firm Clyde & Co. A further webinar was also hosted by the Public Procurement Law Association of Poland, to present the experience of the UK and potential lessons for EU legislation for its own future reforms.