Public procurement for innovation: the UK case

This chapter provides a review and assessment of public procurement of innovation in the UK. Public procurement of innovation has long been of significant policy and research interest in the UK, but particularly so in the last decade. Accordingly, a host of initiatives and reports have been introduced aimed at mobilising the use of UK public procurement to support competitiveness and innovation. Despite conflicting objectives in procurement policy and a recent shift in focus towards efficiency in government spending and away from innovation, the UK case has been widely used as an international exemplar. The chapter is structured as follows: First, the context for the wider practice and governance of public procurement in the UK is introduced, including broad statistical evidence of the breadth of public procurement expenditure in the UK. Against this background, we provide a description of key policy initiatives designed to embed public procurement in the innovation policy portfolio of the UK. As examples, we provide some short case studies to explore the reach and limitations of the policy approaches and instruments used. We finally provide some conclusions about the recent development and foreseeable future use of innovation procurement in the UK. In particular, we question the level of dissemination and impact of some of these measures