CMA publishes dual-report package on public procurement, estimating bid rigging costs taxpayers up to £3.5bn annually

The Competition and Markets Authority published two reports on 8 September 2026 on public procurement and competition, delivered by CEO Sarah Cardell at a Parliamentary event in the Jubilee Room, House of Commons. The package covers how government can deploy its roughly £400 billion annual purchasing budget more strategically, and makes a separate, urgent case for tackling bid rigging. The main report, 'Public Procurement in the National Interest', identifies five systemic weaknesses: unclear trade-off prioritisation between cost, innovation, sovereignty and social value; fragmented purchasing across public bodies reducing collective bargaining power; incentive structures that reward procedural compliance over outcomes; barriers preventing innovative British firms from scaling through public contracts; and insufficient use of procurement to stimulate new technological capabilities. The report draws on two years of engagement across civil engineering, cloud computing, defence and the UK scale-up ecosystem, supported by the CMA's Growth and Investment Council. The companion paper, 'Rigged Bids, Real Costs', argues that even a conservative assumption that 2% of UK public procurement is affected by bid-rigging collusion implies taxpayers are overpaying suppliers by £1 billion annually, with estimates reaching £3.5 billion under still-conservative prevalence assumptions. The CMA says the technology now exists for proactive algorithmic detection and calls for urgent data-infrastructure investment and legal frameworks for systematic screening, noting that other jurisdictions have already moved faster. The five recommendations direct national, regional and local government to adopt stronger system leadership, better-coordinated purchasing across public bodies, and procurement processes designed to encourage market entry by smaller and innovative firms.

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