Department of Health and Social Care

39 Victoria Street

London

SW1H 0EU

UK

E-mail: procurement.operations@dhsc.gov.uk

NUTS: UKI32

Internet address(es)

Main address: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/department-of-health-and-social-care

Address of the buyer profile: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/department-of-health-and-social-care

II.1.1) Title

II.1.2) Main CPV code

33696200

II.1.3) Type of contract

Supplies

II.1.4) Short description

These is a requirement to establish supplies for a high-throughput quantitative serology method to identify people (initially NHS staff and patients and other key workers) who have had Covid-19 and have developed antibodies. This testing will help provide a better understanding of the disease and therefore inform the next stages of the Covid-19 strategy such as how to ease lock-down measures. The UK Chief Medical Officers previously agreed that we should be procuring centrally, where possible to avoid internal competition in relation to supplies. This also includes avoiding duplicating validations exercises of the same kit. Therefore, we have reached out to the devolved administrations (DAs) and Crown Dependencies (CD’s) to engage them with the validation and roll-out plans. The existing high throughput platforms have enough capacity to meet patient demand and to provide testing of NHS staff.

II.1.6) Information about lots

This contract is divided into lots: No

II.1.7) Total value of the procurement

Value excluding VAT: 135 161 955.00  GBP

IV.1.1) Type of procedure

Award of a contract without prior publication of a call for competition

Justification for selected award procedure:

The works, supplies or services can be provided only by a particular economic operator for the following reason: protection of exclusive rights, including intellectual property rights

Explanation

Procurement in reliance on reg.32(2)(b)(iii) of the PCR 2015

1) DHSC understands, from enquiries made from its own technical experts, that the Abbott test instruments referred to above are a ‘closed’ platform, meaning that only goods manufactured by Abbott can work with it.

2) Reg.32(2) provides that the negotiated procedure without prior publication (i.e. the making of a direct award) may be used for a public supply contract: ‘(b) where the works, supplies or services can be supplied only by a particular economic operator for any of the following reasons.: ... (iii) the protection of exclusive rights, including intellectual property rights, but only... where no reasonable alternative or substitute exists and the absence of competition is not the result of an artificial narrowing down of the parameters of the procurement’.

3) Based on DHSC’s understanding, this requirement has been met thus:

• the supplies can be supplied only by a particular economic operator for the protection of exclusive rights, including intellectual property rights — Abbott has exclusive intellectual property rights over the testing laboratory systems and therefore are the only supplier that can provide the testing kits to work on the instruments already in use in the relevant laboratories;

• no reasonable alternative or substitute exists — the instruments run on a closed system and therefore can only use testing kits made by Abbott and therefore no reasonable alternative exists;

• the absence of competition is not the result of an artificial narrowing down of the parameters of the procurement — this is not the case, as has been mentioned previously this procurement is part of a procurement strategy by the UK government to increase testing capacity exponentially to meet demand due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

IV.1.8) Information about Government Procurement Agreement (GPA)

The procurement is covered by the Government Procurement Agreement: Yes

Abbott Laboratories Ltd

Maidenhead

UK

NUTS: UK

The contractor is an SME: No

VI.4.1) Review body