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Doesn't seem a big deal that they aren't forbidden from bidding. It's the government that should be prevented from choosing them, if anything.

Questionable how enforcable a bidding-ban could be, given how trivial it presumably is to bid through a proxy/subsidiary entity.

The Horizon project didn't fail — the customer was happy and signed off on the successful delivery. The customer even insisted that all was well for decades after that. Quite clearly there was no failure and no reason for any cooling-off period.

RAA. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum if you want.

Based on my experience of consulting with public sector, most projects “fail” in one way or another.

Gov departments are notorious for not giving correct requirements, changing requirements or swamping the project in bureaucracy.

If we said firms couldn’t rebid after a failed project (without the cool off) I suspect there wouldn’t be many firms left.

It shouldn’t be this way but unfortunately it is.