Lord Pannick
Main Page: Lord Pannick (Crossbench - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Pannick's debates with the Cabinet Office
(1 year ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
I have explained what we are doing about the inquiry. The grounds for the exclusion of bidders from public procurement procedures are set out in the Public Contracts Regulations 2015. These rules set out the circumstances in which bidders must or may be excluded from the public procurement process. We have to follow those processes. The Procurement Bill, which was brought forward by this Government and debated extensively in this House, and is now being considered elsewhere, strengthens the grounds for exclusion, but we have proceeded with this contract on alerts. I emphasise the value of these alerts in warning and informing people where we have serious problems.
Lord Pannick (CB)
Can the Minister tell the House how much Fujitsu is being paid for this contract and how many other ongoing procurement contracts there are with Fujitsu?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
I do not have information on other procurement contracts but I can tell the noble Lord that, in the year that has just finished, we paid Fujitsu £1.6 million for the alerts contract. If he looks on Contracts Finder, which is one of the transparency mechanisms that we have, he will see that the range of the contract is from £1.6 million to £5 million, but at the moment we have used Fujitsu for only the £1.6 million that I have outlined.