DoH to outsource its outsourcing panel

18 Aug 05
The Department of Health is inviting private sector providers to take over its contract negotiation and deal-brokering team.

19 August 2005

The Department of Health is inviting private sector providers to take over its contract negotiation and deal-brokering team.

The move has triggered concern that the department is responding to criticisms of the public sector's lack of procurement skills by simply outsourcing the outsourcing function itself.

'If you have a problem and you outsource it, you don't solve the problem, you just move it somewhere else,' said Richard Bacon, a senior Conservative member of the Commons Public Accounts Committee.

'The ability to let and manage contracts is something that ought to be a core skill of government and the civil service. If it's not something they have, they should get the skills in and train people up.'

The department is calling for private providers with expertise in a range of skills, including law, health, risk management and project finance, to apply to join an outsourced 'Deal Execution' panel.

Panel members will be used to broker deals and negotiate and manage contracts on behalf of the DoH. Those bidding to join the panel will be assessed against the DoH's current in-house team.

A spokeswoman for the NHS Alliance, which represents PCTs, said that it was seeking clarification on the extent to which the private deal brokers would be involved in commissioning direct services. 'The technical procurement and contracting role is completely different from the commissioning of services, which involves the specification, design and integrated development of those services,' she said. 'The NHS Alliance believes this latter function to be the responsibility of local clinicians working with local people in a devolved decision-making structure.'

Wendy Jones, national officer for the DoH at the senior civil servants' union the FDA, confirmed that the union had not been consulted and said there was a 'general worry' among members about the detached nature of the outsourced panel.

A Department of Health spokesman said that the plans were 'designed to allow the DoH to access the short-term skills needed to negotiate contracts and to do so in a manner that achieves value for money'. It expects to appoint members of the panel next January.

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