Oral Answers to Questions

Jonathan Ashworth Excerpts

Tuesday 13th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

I warmly welcome my right hon. Friend’s enthusiasm and support for that project, which the Prime Minister set out at a high level to the Liaison Committee. We are working hard, including with stakeholders, and the Minister for Care has held a number of roundtables on the subject. We want this to be an open and broad programme, to ensure that we get the right answers to these long-standing questions.

[Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the Secretary of State explain why, following a private drink he had with Lex Greensill and David Cameron, Greensill was handed an NHS payroll financing contract that sought to convert income from NHS staff pay packets into bonds to sell internationally, and effectively to make money on the back of NHS staff in a pandemic? Why was that contract given without tender? Why was that meeting not declared? What pressure did the Secretary of State put on officials to hand that contract to Greensill?

[Matt Hancock]

Ministers were not involved in the decision by NHS Shared Business Services to facilitate the provision of salary advances in pilot schemes. I attended a social meeting organised by the former Prime Minister, and given that departmental business came up, I reported to officials in the normal way.

[Jonathan Ashworth]

This is part of a wider pattern of behaviour. We see PPE contracts going to Tory donors, and a pub landlord WhatsApping the Secretary of State and receiving a testing contract. We see a US insurance firm taking over GP contracts, and one of its bosses gets a job in Downing Street. It is cronyism and it stinks. If the Secretary of State thinks he has done nothing wrong and has nothing to hide, will he publish all the minutes, emails, correspondence and directions that he gave to civil servants, and all his text messages with David Cameron, so that we can see exactly what went on with the awarding of this contract?

[Matt Hancock]

Yesterday the Government announced a review into this matter, and I will of course participate in that in full. It is important that Governments engage with external stakeholders and businesses and, as was raised in the previous question, it is important that that happens, and happens in an appropriate way within the rules, which is what happened in this case.