Part 3: Award of public contracts and procedures Excluding suppliers Section 57: Meaning of excluded and excludable supplier
This section creates the concepts of "excluded" and "excludable" suppliers. Reference to these concepts is made throughout the legislation, typically requiring contracting authorities to prevent excluded suppliers from participating in procurements and being awarded public contracts and allowing contracting authorities to prevent excludable suppliers from participating in procurements and being awarded public contracts (see sections 26, 27 and 29). Excluded and excludable suppliers must or may be removed from dynamic markets (see section 37), must or may not be awarded public contracts under frameworks and may not be permitted to participate in selection processes under frameworks (see sections 45 and 48) and may have public contracts terminated under terms implied by the legislation (see section 78). Aside from the core definitions in this section, there are other provisions in sections 16, 28, 30 and 82 which require contracting authorities to treat suppliers as if they were excluded or excludable in certain circumstances.
	Subsection (1) defines "excluded suppliers" as suppliers which meet a mandatory ground for exclusion and where the contracting authority considers it likely that the circumstances giving rise to the ground will reoccur or are continuing. Suppliers which are on the debarment list on the basis of a mandatory ground for exclusion must also be considered as excluded. A supplier may also be an excluded supplier by virtue of a mandatory exclusion ground applying to its associated persons, which are defined in section 26 as meaning any entity that the supplier is relying on in order to satisfy the conditions of participation, with the exception of a guarantor.
	Subsection (2) defines "excludable suppliers" as suppliers which meet a discretionary ground for exclusion and where the contracting authority considers it likely that the circumstances giving rise to the ground will reoccur or are continuing. Suppliers which are on the debarment list on the basis of a discretionary ground for exclusion must also be considered as excludable. A supplier may also be an excludable supplier by virtue of a discretionary exclusion ground applying to its associated persons.
	Subsection (3) applies where a supplier is on the debarment list because the supplier or a connected person of the supplier poses a threat to national security in relation to particular types of public contracts (see paragraph 35 of Schedule 6), If this is the case, the supplier must be treated as an excluded supplier only in relation to the public contracts of the kind described in the debarment list.
	Subsection (4) affords flexibility to contracting authorities which are private utilities to treat excluded suppliers as if they were excludable.
	Subsection (5) defines the debarment list.
	Subsections (6) and (7) refer to the mandatory and discretionary exclusion grounds in schedules 6 and 7.