Sadiq Khan – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Sadiq Khan on 2014-06-17.

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether a criminal conviction is a disqualification for a Community Rehabilitation contract.

Jeremy Wright

Final bids to run the Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs) are expected at the end of June 2014, and will be rigorously assessed against robust quality, legal, commercial and financial criteria. In the Pre-Qualification Questionnaire, bidders were required to declare that their organisation, directors or partners or any other person who has powers of representation, decision or control had no convictions in relation to criminal offences such as conspiracy, corruption, bribery or fraud and that their organisation had no convictions for criminal offences relating to the conduct of their business or profession and acts of grave misconduct. As set out in the Invitation to Negotiate, bidders are required to notify the department of any changes to the position set out in their declarations or anything that may affect their continued participation in the competition and the department reserves the right to undertake a full re-assessment and, if grounds for rejection exist, exclude the bidder from further participation in the competition.

The MoJ also undertook extensive due diligence of bidders on a range of matters, including integrity and legal compliance issues. As a consequence we have a robust and diverse market.