Price-fixing on a Grand Scale
The clear message behind the Government’s defence procurement policy is that military equipment for the Armed Forces is to be purchased through fair and open competition – the only exception being off-the-shelf purchases and single-source contracts.
This is to be achieved by selecting the preferred Prime Contractor from a choice of industry teams by running a multiple-phase, winner-takes-all competition on the basis of a level playing field, genuinely open to all-comers including non-domiciled suppliers – to ensure it gets the very best value for money for the taxpayer.
However, the ‘sudden death’ competition (which reduces the field of Bidders from six to one following a one-off release of the invitation to tender) currently used by MoD has been rendered ineffective by Defence Contractors, who are quoting identical bottom-line Selling Prices against the same Requirement – which amounts to price-fixing on a grand scale, with the active connivance of the Secretary of State for Defence. Worse still, MoD’s Project Team Leader at Abbey Wood, Bristol is being denied the opportunity to choose the single Prime Contractor on the basis of price competitiveness, and therefore value for money.
This has come about because MoD’s long-standing policy of disclosing the total budgeted expenditure figure or associated year-on-year financial funding profile in the ITT has resulted in Defence Contractors quoting identical bottom-line Selling Prices in their ITT responses – an entirely predictable result!
It is not for MoD to tell the Private Sector what the price of a new equipment programme should be. Instead, it is very much the business of Defence Contractors to tell MoD how much each new equipment programme will cost, based upon the prevailing value of goods, services, labour and finance in the free market shaped, not by the interfering hand of people in the pay of the State who always get it wrong, but by competitive market forces.
@JagPatel3 on twitter
Biting the hand that feeds IT
