Tarzan leaves no stone unturned in pursuit of growth: even in procurement

Chapter 4 of Michael Heseltine's report, 'No Stone unturned in pursuit of growth' may come as a surprise to some, in that he recognises procurement is strategic to a national growth strategy. It represents a significant step forward from Vince Cable's Vision which I have previously discussed.

Although quite late in the chapter (para. 2.21), Heseltine answers the exam question I wish CIPS would ask, namely, 'What is public procurement for?'  I couldn't agree more with his view:

The simple answer is to secure value for money for the public purse. Who can argue with that? The problem is that it is often equated with short term, lowest cost procurement which ignores the issues about the country’s industrial base – the exploitation of R&D, the skills we need and the creation of jobs. It also ignores international practice. No country of which I have any knowledge takes so simple a view. Although crucial in major policy areas such as defence or aerospace, the same issues are everyday challenges for ministers whether they are placing contracts for high speed trains or new IT systems. We are concerned about the destiny of our manufacturing sector but we do not spend enough time exploring the ways government can work to support it.

Heseltine is also brave enough to express views others may not have, for example,

Veering towards procurement bravery or stupid sourcing?

On 9 May, despite others criticising the government's U-turn on fighter jets, I tweeted that the U-turn was worthy of praise.  It took bravery to recognise a wrong procurement decision had been made and then change direction rather than 'keep calm and carry on'.

Today we saw another potential act of procurement bravery.  This time it was the decision to place in custody the outsourcing of £1.5bn of police services.

Regardless of whether or not these were initially examples of stupid sourcing, to me there's a need to acknowledge that stupid can become brave and clever procurement.  Revisiting and changing procurement decisions before it's too late has to be one of the key benefits of Gateway Reviews. It also requires bravery. (Although somehow I doubt that a gateway review prompted the revisiting of the above two examples). Why do we so rarely hear of procurements being aborted or changed as a result of Gateway Reviews - surely that is a cause for celebration that the risk management processes worked!

Having said that,