Acceso usuarios
Eleanor Aspey
This article examines the impact of the EU legal regime governing procurement on the inclusion of labour concerns in utilities procurement in the United Kingdom. It presents the results of qualitative research examining the impact of the legal regime at three points in the procurement process: the initial decision over whether or not to include labour policies in procurement, the decision over which types of labour policy to include and, finally, how to integrate those labour concerns into the procurement process. It will show that, overall, the legal regime has little impact on utilities' procurement process, with the majority being satisfied by the operation of the regime, though it will be argued that this is often linked to a lack of knowledge of the regime on the part of the utilities. It will also be shown that the EU regime significantly restricts the use of one particular policy which is of current political interest, that of favouring British or local firms, with the majority of utilities refraining from including such policies owing to the EU regime despite their wishes.
