Beckles: Procurement changes weaken OPR

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les is warn­ing that pro­posed amend­ments to the pub­lic pro­cure­ment law would re­duce the pow­ers of the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion (OPR) and give min­is­ters greater dis­cre­tion over pro­cure­ment.

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, Beck­les said the changes would re­sult in “more pro­cure­ment out­side the Act”, few­er pow­ers for the in­de­pen­dent reg­u­la­tor and less pro­tec­tion for sup­pli­ers.

She fo­cused par­tic­u­lar­ly on Clause 5, which would change the reme­dies avail­able to the OPR fol­low­ing a com­plaint or in­ves­ti­ga­tion.