Originally Posted by
Rheinstorff
All commercial officers belong to the Cabinet Office and it is they, not MOD, that let HMG’s contracts of this scale. That’s not to say the requirement setting doesn’t rest with MOD, but even that has to be agreed by the commercial types and can be changed by them. That’s how you exert central fiscal authority in the UK these days. I don’t agree with it, but it seems we’re stuck with it.
I know it’s fashionable to trot out the ‘MOD can’t contract for toffee’ mantra, but in truth MOD (literally) can’t contract at all in this case.
Credit (or discredit if that’s even a thing) where it is due?
Rheinstorff,
You are wrong in your understanding of how Commercial Officers operate in Government. The element of the Cabinet Office that you refer to, the Crown Commercial Service or Government Commercial Office does not "take over" procurement contracts, it merely acts as a sort of licensing authority for Commercially qualified staff, this has been at SCS and Grade 6 up until now and is now being extended down to Grade 7. All this means is that to continue to operate you must have passed a Cabinet office assessment day. Once you have passed this you are permanently allocated to a Government Department or Ministry in the relevant Commercial Directorate, which ALL Government Departments have, over 300 alone in the Home Office and the same number in the MoJ for instance. These Commercial Directorates then have Commercial Officers embedded in the various operating divisions and functional areas who carry out normal commercial functions, procurements, competitions and contract management being the main areas of operation. These folk have delegated authority of up to £100m and a lot higher in some areas. They carry out ALL aspects of procurement, the Cabinet Office does not, it merely provides a series of Framework Contracts through which usually quite small procurements are carried out, the bulk of Government procurements being under £5m. Anything strategically sensitive or of the multi Billion range is managed by the same process but with a sign off by Ministers, if it is particular sensitive then it will have the PM as sign off, after the Secretary of State for the Department has signed it off.