By Dr. Mar­garet Satya Rose

On Feb­ru­ary 24, 2025, the Unit­ed King­dom’s long-await­ed Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment Act 2023 came in­to force, mark­ing a wa­ter­shed mo­ment in UK pub­lic pro­cure­ment pol­i­cy. Billed as a “post-Brex­it re­nais­sance” in gov­ern­ment con­tract­ing, the Act promis­es a stream­lined ap­proach to pro­cure­ment, em­pha­sis­ing sim­plic­i­ty, strate­gic val­ue, and lo­cal eco­nom­ic growth. Yet a clos­er look re­veals a sig­nif­i­cant philo­soph­i­cal piv­ot—one which (don’t shoot the mes­sen­ger!) might, from a cer­tain an­gle, look like (lots of qual­i­fy­ing lan­guage there) it comes from the same fam­i­ly of poli­cies as Don­ald Trump’s “Amer­i­ca First” agen­da. That is to say, a will­ing­ness to pri­ori­tise na­tion­al in­ter­ests over strict ad­her­ence to glob­al free-mar­ket prin­ci­ples.

For T&T, near­ly two years in­to our ‘mod­ern’ pro­cure­ment regime, the UK’s move rais­es a time­ly ques­tion: if the world’s biggest economies feel free to re­shape pro­cure­ment rules to serve do­mes­tic agen­das, should small­er, less-in­dus­tri­alised, post­colo­nial na­tions re­main wed­ded to “glob­al best prac­tices” that of­ten re­flect dif­fer­ent pri­or­i­ties?

The ques­tion of the im­pact of Trump’s Amer­i­ca First agen­da on Caribbean na­tions loomed at a re­cent Vice-Chan­cel­lor’s Fo­rum at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI). Pan­el­lists, Pro­fes­sor Justin Robin­son and econ­o­mist Jef­frey Sachs warned of in­ten­si­fy­ing pro­tec­tion­ism, new tar­iff regimes, and a po­ten­tial re­treat from mul­ti­lat­er­al co­op­er­a­tion. Yet, as is usu­al in these spaces, they left un­ex­plored one crit­i­cal point: the role of pub­lic pro­cure­ment as a non-tar­iff bar­ri­er, shap­ing who wins gov­ern­ment con­tracts and which in­dus­tries sur­vive and thrive.

It is this of­ten-over­looked pol­i­cy are­na that makes the UK’s Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment Act 2023 so im­por­tant for broad­er geopo­lit­i­cal pol­i­cy dis­cours­es. No longer are pub­lic pro­cure­ment reg­u­la­tions mere­ly sub­or­di­nate to broad­er eco­nom­ic poli­cies; with its de­ci­sive terms, the UK’s Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment Act 2023 el­e­vates pro­cure­ment from a pro­ce­dur­al mech­a­nism to a con­sti­tu­tive, gen­er­a­tive frame­work—one that em­pow­ers ag­ile de­ci­sion-mak­ing for trans­for­ma­tive pub­lic im­pact.

The rad­i­cal de­par­ture: Pro­cure­ment ob­jec­tives reimag­ined

The UK’s Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment Act 2023 marks a clear de­par­ture from its pre­de­ces­sor, the Pub­lic Con­tracts Reg­u­la­tions (PCR) 2015, based on the EU Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment Di­rec­tives. Reg­u­la­tion 18 of the PCR de­signed to build in­ter­nal EU mar­ket re­silience em­pha­sised open com­pe­ti­tion, trans­paren­cy and pro­por­tion­al­i­ty, with a strong fo­cus on mar­ket ac­cess for EU sup­pli­ers. These prin­ci­ples are con­sis­tent with the Unit­ed Na­tions Mod­el Law on Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment, “laun­dry-list” ap­proach to pro­cure­ment ob­jec­tives which in­cludes trade lib­er­al­i­sa­tion, com­pe­ti­tion, ef­fi­cien­cy, trans­paren­cy, in­tegri­ty and so on (but does not ref­er­ence so­cial val­ue, lo­cal in­dus­try or sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment). This was—and for a large part of the world in the glob­al south, that used the UN Mod­el Law as its un­der­ly­ing frame­work for pro­cure­ment re­form—and still is con­sid­ered the gold stan­dard of pro­cure­ment law.

How­ev­er, the new UK Act was com­plete­ly re-writ­ten to re­move the laun­dry list and crys­tallis­es its pro­cure­ment ob­jec­tives in just four core themes in Sec­tion 12:

1) De­liv­er­ing val­ue for mon­ey: En­sur­ing that pub­lic funds are used ef­fi­cient­ly to achieve the best pos­si­ble out­comes.

2) Max­imis­ing pub­lic ben­e­fit: Pri­ori­tis­ing broad­er so­ci­etal goals, in­clud­ing eco­nom­ic growth, com­mu­ni­ty well-be­ing, and en­vi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

3) Shar­ing in­for­ma­tion: En­hanc­ing trans­paren­cy by mak­ing pro­cure­ment de­ci­sions and poli­cies ac­ces­si­ble to sup­pli­ers and the pub­lic.

4) Act­ing with in­tegri­ty: Up­hold­ing eth­i­cal stan­dards and main­tain­ing pub­lic trust through­out the pro­cure­ment process.

This shift rep­re­sents more than a pro­ce­dur­al change—it is a nor­ma­tive-eth­i­cal re­ori­en­ta­tion that fun­da­men­tal­ly re­de­fines the pur­pose of pub­lic pro­cure­ment reg­u­la­tion. First­ly, com­pe­ti­tion and oth­er proces­su­al mech­a­nisms (such as ef­fi­cien­cy) are re­moved from the ob­jec­tives. This ad­dress­es a long-held bug-bear in pro­cure­ment dis­cours­es re­lat­ing to the con­fu­sion of ends (ob­jec­tives) and means (process­es) in pro­cure­ment reg­u­la­tion. Com­pe­ti­tion, un­der the new Act, is not cod­i­fied as a pro­cure­ment end, but has been re­duced to just what it is - one of many po­ten­tial means to achieve pub­lic ben­e­fit. Man­dat­ing com­pe­ti­tion in the ob­jec­tives re­sults in the fo­cus be­ing com­pe­ti­tion and get­ting the com­pe­ti­tion right, as op­posed to achiev­ing best val­ue for pub­lic mon­ey.

Sec­ond­ly, by re­fus­ing to en­gage in the laun­dry list and ac­tu­al­ly craft­ing four over­ar­ch­ing ob­jec­tives two of which that are en­tire­ly unique “max­i­miz­ing pub­lic ben­e­fit” and “shar­ing in­for­ma­tion” the leg­is­la­tion gets to the root of the pur­pose of pro­cure­ment law re­mov­ing over­lap and con­tra­dic­tions that have tra­di­tion­al­ly stymied ef­fec­tive ap­pli­ca­tion of the prin­ci­ples. Max­imis­ing pub­lic ben­e­fit it­self is a rad­i­cal­ly new mod­el for un­der­stand­ing the core pur­pose of pub­lic pro­cure­ment and ev­i­dences the UK gov­ern­ment com­mit­ment to mis­sion-ori­ent­ed pub­lic pol­i­cy.

A post-ne­olib­er­al turn for TT?

While T&T’s Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act, 2015, ar­tic­u­lat­ed in Sec­tion 5, al­so at­tempts to adopt a post-ne­olib­er­al ori­en­ta­tion by ex­clud­ing com­pe­ti­tion as a core ob­jec­tive, it does not go as far as the UK’s Act in sim­pli­fy­ing and clar­i­fy­ing pro­cure­ment ob­jec­tives. In­stead, our Act con­tin­ues the “laun­dry list” ap­proach, pro­mot­ing a broad ar­ray of prin­ci­ples in­clud­ing ac­count­abil­i­ty, trans­paren­cy, val­ue for mon­ey, ef­fi­cien­cy, fair­ness, eq­ui­ty, pub­lic con­fi­dence, lo­cal in­dus­try de­vel­op­ment, sus­tain­able pro­cure­ment, and sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment.

The Act’s am­bi­tion is clear, but this ap­proach per­pet­u­ates the his­tor­i­cal con­cep­tu­al con­fu­sion by fail­ing to dis­tin­guish ends from means. Ob­jec­tives like ef­fi­cien­cy and fair­ness are not ul­ti­mate goals but rather strate­gies to achieve high­er-or­der out­comes such as max­imis­ing val­ue for pub­lic mon­ey and max­imis­ing pub­lic ben­e­fit. More­over, ob­jec­tives like lo­cal in­dus­try de­vel­op­ment and sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment may be un­der­mined by com­pet­ing aims such as ef­fi­cien­cy and val­ue for mon­ey, par­tic­u­lar­ly if these are in­ter­pret­ed through a nar­row, cost-cen­tric lens.

Com­pound­ing this con­fu­sion is the in­co­her­ence in­tro­duced with­in T&T’s reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work by the Pro­cure­ment (Meth­ods and Pro­ce­dures) Reg­u­la­tions 2021, specif­i­cal­ly Reg­u­la­tion 5(1), which states:

“A pub­lic body shall utilise open bid­ding, un­less the com­plex­i­ty of the pro­cure­ment or mar­ket con­di­tions ren­ders an­oth­er method more ap­pro­pri­ate for achiev­ing the best val­ue for mon­ey.”

This word­ing ef­fec­tive­ly re­in­states open bid­ding as the de­fault method, which is a proxy for a com­pe­ti­tion-first ap­proach. By po­si­tion­ing open bid­ding as the norm and re­quir­ing jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for al­ter­na­tive meth­ods, the reg­u­la­tion pri­ori­tis­es com­pe­ti­tion over oth­er pro­cure­ment meth­ods. This de­fault set­ting con­flicts with the flex­i­bil­i­ty and nu­anced ap­proach en­vi­sioned in Sec­tion 5 of the Act, re­veal­ing a leg­isla­tive regime at odds with it­self. A point I have made be­fore.

Philo­soph­i­cal­ly, the UK’s Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment Act 2023 de­ci­sive­ly side­steps two en­dur­ing his­tor­i­cal chal­lenges in pub­lic pro­cure­ment pol­i­cy:

(1) Ra­tio­nal­is­ing vague and some­times com­pet­ing ob­jec­tives and

(2) Dis­en­tan­gling the ends of pro­cure­ment (like pub­lic ben­e­fit) from the means (like com­pe­ti­tion). How­ev­er, chang­ing the law is al­ways just the be­gin­ning. It’s a step to­ward col­lec­tive change. It re­mains to be seen whether UK-based prac­ti­tion­ers can tru­ly shed the shack­les of ne­olib­er­al eth­i­cal ori­en­ta­tion (NEO) that con­sis­tent­ly and un­re­flex­ive­ly equate good pro­cure­ment with com­pet­i­tive pro­cure­ment.

For T&T, the chal­lenge is the same. This coun­try’s new Act was part of the post-ne­olib­er­al glob­al shift and one of the first world­wide to man­date lo­cal in­dus­try de­vel­op­ment and sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment as pro­cure­ment ob­jec­tives from as far back as 2015. We fal­tered in 2021 by en­gag­ing drafters of our pro­cure­ment reg­u­la­tions who didn’t un­der­stand the sea change that is tak­ing place in pub­lic pol­i­cy dis­cours­es across dis­ci­plines and ap­plied out­dat­ed pro­cure­ment scripts.

We had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to lead in pro­cure­ment gov­er­nance in­no­va­tion world­wide but that ship has now sailed. Per­haps, now that our for­mer colo­nial mas­ter has tak­en that step too, like good mim­ic men, maybe we will see more of our lo­cal pol­i­cy­mak­ers, con­sul­tants and prac­ti­tion­ers be­gin to do the same. I can on­ly hope.

Dr Mar­garet Satya Rose, is se­nior part­ner and head of the Gov­er­nance, Pro­cure­ment & Fi­nan­cial Crime (GPFC) Prac­tice at Lex Caribbean, At­tor­neys at Law and CEO of Pro­cure­ment Com­pli­ance Plus, a con­sult­ing firm lever­ag­ing tech­nol­o­gy, com­mu­ni­ty and in­no­va­tion for bet­ter pro­cure­ment out­comes. Rose holds an LLB (Hons), an LLM in Cor­po­rate Com­mer­cial Law from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies and a Doc­tor­ate in Pol­i­cy Re­search and Prac­tice with a spe­cial­ism in pub­lic pro­cure­ment law and pol­i­cy from the In­sti­tute for Pol­i­cy Re­search, Uni­ver­si­ty of Bath. Dr Rose can be con­tact­ed at mar­garet.rose@tt.lex­caribbean.com