Blue Passport Contract - French Company £100M Cheaper than UK Firm....

[Juliand]

This is an interesting one....The controversial decision to award the contract for the new Post-Brexit Blue UK passport to a French company over De la Rue, the UK company in the North-East, because the French company put in a tender that was over £100M cheaper than the UK firm, under EU procurement rules. 

So, is it a sign that the UK taxpayer will be paying more, post Brexit, for public products that it purchases to keep contracts in the UK?

Or, does it demonstrate that the EU Public Procurement Rules do actually work in our best interests, to provide best value for those paying the bill?

The CEO of the UK firm that lost the tender has been in the media saying how does he explain this to his employees, that the British passport will be produced outside of the UK? A bit rich, when his company makes Passports for several European and other countries. Gemalto, the French company that won the contract, has said that 70 new jobs will be created at it's divisions in Hampshire and Lancashire where the passports will be made - apparently.

The other hypocrisy is that the UK wants Free International Trade, for the UK to sell it's products all over the World, but apparently only wants to buy products from UK companies? That's not going to work is it?

The UK will probably be bound in to adhering to EU procurement rules Post-Brexit anyway, as part of the Divorce settlement.

Any opinions on this?

[colesey]

Putting EU procurement rules to one side (and let’s face it many EU countries already do......), the dilemma is essentially whether it is more correct to be patriotic and give business to a local company or to be more accountable to the tax payer by securing the most cost effective deal.

The £100m saving (on a @£500m deal) is a lot of money for the public purse and the French firm did well to undercut De La Rue by so much given that they had the strong Euro exchange rate against them. Imo the directors / shareholders of De La Rue should rather be having a post mortem on why they were so off-market in their quote and taking steps to become more competitive.

Another angle going forward is whether Brexit means that UK wants to be perceived as being truly open to global business or whether it wants to become Little Britain. Giving preference to more expensive local companies would infer the latter.

Painful as it may be, in my opinion the correct decision was reached.

[Octoparrot]

I personally couldn't give a toss where my passport is made, I'd rather the money is spent on the NHS. If the government gave the contract to the British company everyone would be up in arms that they wasted taxpayers money!

[doylebros]

None of the articles I've read on this have mentioned a price reduction to the customer, in fact there talking about an increase from next month for your renewal, so what happens to the 100 million going forward?

[Wolf Burger]

Pure news media propaganda.

We are still under European law and as such need to adhere to European Law.
It really is that simple.

When we leave the EU we will be able to conduct our own trade deals.

[willni]

Pure news media propaganda.

We are still under European law and as such need to adhere to European Law.
It really is that simple.

When we leave the EU we will be able to conduct our own trade deals.

Pretty much, depends on the tender outline really. £100m is very small in reality when you consider how many construction ventures go to Euro firms and vice versa.

Also it definitely wasn't a tender based on cost, Security, Time to complete the job and companies financial standing springs to mind, especially the latter after Carillion, De La Rue has a £189m pension deficit.

[pudding]

Great(?) Britain in over charging, under delivering shocker......