Yes, it is the European Union's fault.
The EC Procurement Regulations were very well intentioned with the commendable aim of making government
contracts open to bidders throughout the EU, and including avoiding single tender renewal of existing contracts.
Problem was that it was part effective, there were occasons of large corporate incumbents not winning recompetitions.
So they lobbied the EU to introduce a Remedies Directive to give them the right to sue the relevant government body.
The legal profession also saw a great opportunity to milk the government service cow here.
This went beyond setting aside a contract award as invalid and recovering bid costs, to claiming all the profit they might have made.
The result is that if a government body awards a contract for perhaps £10 million without going through the full EU timetable,
an unlimited number of companies can each claim £10 million each etc as damages. This is of course the salvation of a failed
bid teams' prospects, perhaps delaying or even preventing them from being rightsized out; and a fishing lawyer's charter
to make money out of the tax payer. Cynics say such green-mail is more profitable than winning the contract itself.
And there is a trick here, an incumbent that loses can, by challenging an award to another company, effectively suspend such
award for perhaps a year, thereby getting another year's revenue from the government body, and giving it the opportunity.
to, in the best tradtions of modern capitalism, eliminate the competition, by bullying and/or buying out the new entrant company.
One of the adverse distorting consequences of such EU sourced law is that the undertaking of public procurements
tends to be excessively constrained by the imperative of not being held for ransom by such litigants and that is often
given precedence over whethe the goods or services are fit for purpose, of good quality or are innovatively provided.
This also helps stuffs new entrant companies prospects of winning government business, in favour of large incumbents.
I would assume that the go ahead to make arangements was not given until Theresa May had lost her vote in December 2018.
This would not have left enough time to run the full EU compliant procurement process to obtain ferrying services in April 2019.
In such circumstances, the Transport ministry may have decided the 29 March 2019 deadline was the more important imperative.
Brexit so you can do NO bid contracts, which violated the laws that UK government pass for public bidding of contracts
The UK Treasury's established policy was to obtain value for money by competitive tender on all significant contracts and that preceded
the introduction of EC/EU regulations, and it would be a misleading implication to regard the ferry contracts as no bid contracts.
The UK law here is merely the UK implementaion of the EU Procurement Regulations as required by treaty.
Also its the EU fault for awarding a Pizza restaurant a 33 Mil ferry contract, HOW DARE the EU force the UK to have NO bid contracts /s
Is that what you are stating?
It is certainly not what I have said.
Not that Verh is not a clown himself, but Tusk's response is pure garbage).
