Armed Forces Bill

Dan Carden Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Monday 8th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

It is a privilege to follow the hon. Member for Wolverhampton South West (Stuart Anderson), with that powerful and very personal contribution to the debate.

This Bill is an opportunity to ensure basic rights, support and care for every member of the armed forces, veterans and their families. I want to address access to mental health services and, in particular, the treatment of addiction in the armed forces and veteran community, where rates are higher than in the general UK population. That should be of no surprise, because the unique demands of life in the military too often include experiences of serious trauma, violence and loss; because the Army, in particular, recruits from deprived working-class communities, where incidences of alcohol and substance misuse are higher; and because, as the charities that work with service families and veterans attest, the culture, on which no judgment is needed, is one where harmful drinking rates are considered normal, vulnerability is considered a weakness and seeking help is seen as failing to meet the demands of service. All of this has to change if we are to see an end to the shameful number of veterans ending up in mental health crisis—homeless, in prison or committing suicide—and it can change. The number using MOD treatment services is alarmingly low, and the majority of veterans enrolled in treatment programmes left service many years earlier, which prompts the question: what more can be done to improve early intervention?

Tom Harrison House in Anfield in my constituency is a residential veteran-specific addiction treatment centre, and I have got to know veterans there and heard their stories and about their struggles to get the support and understanding they need. I have not met one who was referred by, or got the support they required, from the MOD or armed forces. If we truly want to honour these men and women, we can and should use this Bill to guarantee them the mental health services they deserve.

There remains stigma and intolerance towards addiction. For too long, substance misuse has been regarded as a moral affliction—a testament to someone’s character rather than a legitimate health issue. We have to defeat that stigma in order to make progress in society and in the forces. With addiction, the substance of choice is irrelevant: it is a route to escape, the way to cope, or the way to manage mental ill health and past trauma.

Last week, in a written answer, the Minister for Defence People and Veterans stated:

“Drug and alcohol abuse is incompatible with the standards we expect of those who Serve in the Armed Forces.”

I am afraid that such opinions are outdated, ignorant and a roadblock to effective treatment. Regardless of someone’s training or dedication to their duty, mental health disorders and addiction do not discriminate.

This Bill presents a chance to end the zero-tolerance approach, as other professions have rightly done, stop the perverse situation where the act of seeking help could itself lead to dismissal, deliver addiction treatment programmes for those serving in our armed forces, and fund the military-specific addiction treatment services veterans need and deserve.

Covid-19: NAO Report on Government Procurement

Dan Carden Excerpts

Wednesday 9th December 2020 Westminster Hall

[Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the NAO report on Investigation into government procurement during the covid-19 pandemic.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Eagle. I start by thanking the National Audit Office for its report. I also thank all those who have been working to shine a light on Government procurement during the pandemic: the Good Law Project, which is bringing forward a number of judicial reviews; reporters for Byline Times, openDemocracy, The Guardian and The Sunday Times; and the UK Anti-Corruption Coalition.

By chance, today’s debate takes place on the UN’s International Anti-Corruption Day. A number of businesses and others have contacted me in recent days to share their views and experiences, for which I am grateful. I applied for the debate to highlight the important findings in the NAO report and the serious questions that the Government now have to answer. The report sets out the facts on the tens of billions of pounds of public money spent by Government Departments during the covid-19 pandemic, up to 31 July 2020. It covers the pressure and need to procure goods, services and works quickly; the regulations that applied, or should have applied, to this frenzied procurement; and the management—or mismanagement, in many cases—of procurement risks, often including blatant conflicts of interest.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for securing the debate. PPE Medpro was incorporated on 12 May and was awarded a contract for £122 million for single-use disposable medical robes, which it was going to import. The contract was not advertised, but the company had a link to a Conservative peer. By contrast, my constituents who own Florence Roby spent months trying to get a contract for multi-use medical robes, which can be used up to 100 times. They were given the run-around and, after months, they had to give up and lay off staff. Is that contrast not a perfect example of everything that the National Audit Office highlights as being wrong with procurement in this crisis? This is a missed opportunity to have environmentally sustainable production and value for money, with reusable, not single-use, equipment.

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[Ms Angela Eagle (in the Chair)]

Order. I am not going to allow interventions that long in future. There are many people on the call list, and it is not fair to them.

[Dan Carden]

Thank you, Ms Eagle. I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. Story after story has come forward in a similar vein.

Public procurement regulations are designed to safeguard public confidence in the spending of public money. On 18 March 2020, the Cabinet Office implemented emergency procedures for procurement to allow for extreme urgency, including directly awarding contracts to suppliers without competition. That guidance referred to the need to keep proper records of decisions and actions on individual contracts; to have transparency and publication requirements; and to achieve value for money—basic requirements that the report and other information in the public domain now show the Government failed to meet.

The NAO highlights that, remarkably, the Cabinet Office guidance failed to give direction on managing the risks that should be considered as a result of using direct awards. The usual Cabinet Office spending controls on contracts over £10 million were not applied to the procurement of personal protective equipment. A clearance board was later set up, with an eight-stage process to approve PPE contracts over £5 million, but we know that £1.5 billion was awarded in contracts before proper processes were in place and before any financial and company due diligence process was standardised.

By 31 July 2020, over 8,600 contracts, worth £18 billion, had been awarded, of which £10.5 billion-worth were awarded directly without competition. Under the cover of the pandemic, billions of pounds of public money was handed to private companies, including Tory-linked firms, without competition, transparency or accountability.

[Jane Hunt (Loughborough) (Con)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that we were on daily calls at the time discussing the pandemic and how we could help our constituents and companies? People from all parties were there, including Labour Members who were rightly asking for PPE for care homes and other organisations in their constituencies.

[Dan Carden]

I will move on because I want to go through the ways in which the system was set up. I will move on to some of the case studies highlighted in the report. PestFix, a pest control supplier, was handed a contract worth £350 million for PPE. The Government contracted with PestFix to purchase 25 million FFP2 masks, which we now know did not meet the Government’s published PPE specifications at the time of the order. Only after 600,000 masks were completed and delivered did the Department communicate the problem to PestFix and alter the contract.

Ayanda Capital—a London-based investment firm whose senior adviser was Andrew Mills—was awarded a PPE contract worth £252 million. At the time, Mills was also an adviser to the Board of Trade, part of the Department for International Trade. The 50 million masks purchased from Ayanda Capital failed to meet NHS specifications and were never able to be used. The deal’s documentation failed to identify any conflicts of interest.

Other cases have come to light. P14 Medical, a small firm based in Stroud, Gloucestershire, which recorded significant losses in 2019, was handed a £156 million contract to import PPE from China. Its director is a Conservative councillor. PPE Medpro, which has already been mentioned and is run by Anthony Page, a business associate of Conservative peer Baroness Mone, was handed a £122 million contract weeks after it was set up. In fact, PPE Medpro was set up on the day that Page quit as secretary of the company that deals with Baroness Mone’s brand.

In another case, Spanish businessman Gabriel González Andersson received £21 million of taxpayer’s money for acting as an agent to an American jewellery designer who, despite the absence of relevant experience, received major contracts for the supply of PPE. The Health Secretary’s former neighbour, who runs a pub in his village and has no previous experience in medical supplies, was awarded a £30 million contract to make millions of plastic vials for covid tests. He first contacted the Health Secretary by WhatsApp.

It is not just in the procurement of PPE that the Government have serious questions to answer. Some £840,000 was handed to the communications company, Public First, to run focus groups. The contract for that work was awarded retrospectively. Public First was founded by husband and wife Mr Frayne and Ms Wolf in 2016. Both Frayne and Wolf have worked in senior positions at different times for the former Education Secretary, and now Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office, the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove).

The NAO stated:

“We found no documentation on the consideration of conflicts of interest, no recorded process for choosing the supplier, and no specific justification for using emergency procurement.”

The Government have tried to claim that the NAO report shows Ministers properly declared their interests and that there is no evidence of Ministers’ involvement in procurement decisions or contract management. The truth is that we just do not know what role Ministers played.

The Government’s only explanation is that this was an emergency and they were sourcing PPE as quickly as possible. Yes, the Government had to source PPE quickly—a problem of their own making. During years of cutbacks, emergency stockpiles of PPE dwindled and went out of date. The Government ignored warnings from their own advisers to buy missing equipment, and pandemic planning became yet another casualty of austerity and incompetence. It took Ministers until March to realise that the NHS supply chain, fragmented by years of marketisation, could not distribute PPE quickly enough to meet demand, which left Ministers scrambling to source PPE from elsewhere and overpaying by tens of billions of pounds.

[Jane Hunt]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Dan Carden]

No, I do not have time.

Despite the enormous sums being spent, PPE was still not making it to the frontline. There was a huge disconnect between the boasts being made by Ministers in Parliament and the reality on the ground, where key workers were pleading for the kit that they needed to do their job safely. We all recognised that this was an emergency, but the need to act fast does not explain or excuse the Government’s actions. It does not explain why the emergency procurement rules should have been applied to non-PPE or non-emergency suppliers, such as public relations agencies, and nor does it justify why some consultants were paid in one week what a nurse earns in an entire year. It does not explain why rules around transparency, which were not suspended by the emergency procedures, were not followed, or why the Government still refuse to reveal basic information about who was bidding for contracts and how decisions about contracts were made.

Here is where the Government’s story really falls apart. We know that dozens of experienced local suppliers that offered to provide PPE were ignored. These qualified businesses had the capacity to produce large quantities of PPE quickly, but they were overlooked for contracts while businesses that had no prior experience were deemed fit. Ahead of this debate, I was contacted by reputable PPE suppliers that say they were crowded out during the pandemic by organisations that had no history of PPE manufacture or supply, some of which we now know had existed only for a matter of weeks. One established family-run company in Merseyside was forced to lay off staff after its offer of PPE to Government was ignored and then refused, as contracts instead went to Tory-linked firms buying from abroad.

The cronyism does not stop with contracts. We have also witnessed an opaque and troubling appointment process, whereby senior figures with close ties to the Conservative party have won public jobs that are of great importance in the national response to the pandemic. I pay tribute to Gabriel Pogrund and Tom Calver at The Sunday Times for their investigation, which was headlined, “Chumocracy first in line as Ministers splash covid cash”. Their investigation really is essential reading; it is extensive, and there is not time to do it justice in this debate, but it starts with the Prime Minister’s appointment of a close family friend, Kate Bingham, who is also the wife of a Conservative MP, to head up the vaccines taskforce. There was no formal appointment process, and Ms Bingham was appointed despite being a venture capitalist who had no previous experience in the field. She herself has said that her initial reaction to the Prime Minister’s offer was to say:

“I am not a vaccine expert, why should I be the right person?”

Bingham has spent £670,000 on consultants from a small PR agency with close links to the family of Dominic Cummings. She is also facing accusations that she shared sensitive Government information at a private equity networking event in the United States.

Then there is Lord Feldman, a former chairman of the Conservative party, who was secretly appointed as an unpaid adviser to the Department of Health. He sat in on discussions between health Ministers and Tory donor David Meller. Meller was later handed a £163 million contract for PPE despite his company having no track record of producing PPE. I wonder whether Mr Meller will be making any more donations to the Conservative party any time soon—he certainly must be flush for cash.

George Pascoe-Watson and Tory peer Lord O'Shaughnessy, chairman and senior adviser of the lobbying firm Portland Communications, were appointed as advisers at the Department of Health. They quite literally split their time between advising the Government on their covid response and advising their corporate clients on what was going on in Government. Lord O’Shaughnessy took part in calls with Boston Consulting Group, a Portland Communications client, which went on to be handed a £21 million contract from Government.

Of course, if anyone has a problem with any of this, they could take it up with the Government’s anti-corruption champion, the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose), who is here with us today in Westminster Hall. He is also a Conservative MP and the husband of Dido Harding, the Conservative peer appointed to head the nation’s test and trace programme. Her appointment is now facing a possible judicial review.

[John Penrose (Weston-super-Mare) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Dan Carden]

I will of course give way, as I have mentioned the hon. Gentleman.

[John Penrose]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way. He is making some important points. However, I will just say in response to the charges he is making against myself and my wife that he really ought to confirm that he is aware that the anti-corruption champion’s role has never had—since it was first created under Tony Blair—investigatory powers; those are rightly held at arm’s length from political leadership. That has always been the case, and therefore to imply that there is some sort of investigation that I should be conducting is misleading and dangerous.

Could the hon. Gentleman also confirm that he is aware that both my role as anti-corruption tsar and my wife’s role, which he has just mentioned, are unpaid and that she is not the accounting officer for NHS Test and Trace, which is a position held by a full-time civil servant?

Finally, can the hon. Gentleman confirm that since both my wife and I are parliamentarians, and therefore have to make declarations in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, he is not implying, and would not try to imply, that either of us has gained inappropriately in any way from our respective roles?

[Dan Carden]

On that last point, I can say I certainly never made that accusation. My point would be that it is inappropriate that he is in the position he is in as anti-corruption champion. How can a Conservative MP be in charge of overseeing corruption when the Government of the day is a Conservative Government?

[John Penrose]

rose—

[Dan Carden]

No. In the words of The Sunday Times authors—

[John Penrose]

On a point of order, Ms Eagle. It is important to note that ever since the role of anti-corruption champion was invented, it has, under Labour Governments as well as Conservative, always been held by an MP—sometimes a Minister—who is a member of the governing party of the day.

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[Dan Carden]

It remains completely inappropriate.

In the words of The Sunday Times authors,

“As the government mounted a war effort to combat Covid-19, it has instead resembled more of a ‘chumocracy’. This is a world in which ministers have turned to friends with links to the Conservatives.”

While the British public continue to make huge personal sacrifices, a privileged group of business people with close connections to the Government has turned huge profits from the pandemic. What is perhaps most remarkable is that Ministers actually created a VIP high-priority lane for companies bidding for contracts, which were put forward by Government officials, Ministers’ offices, MPs and Members of the House of Lords. It is not just a perception of cronyism; we now know that the system was rigged, with privileged access granted to companies with connections to top politicians. These favoured companies were 10 times more likely to be successful than those without political connections. This flies in face of one of the key principles of procurement: that suppliers should be on a level playing field. If this happened in any other country, we would call it corruption.

There can be no justification for the Government withholding the names of fast-tracked companies allowed to jump the queue, often at the expense of more proven competitors. Transparency is a fundamental principle; the public have the right to know how their money has been spent. The NAO’s investigation focused on 20 contracts, and its revelations could just be the tip of the iceberg. There must be a full independent investigation into Government contracts granted during covid-19.

More than 100,000 people have now signed a parliamentary petition calling for a public inquiry. The Government must, as a bare minimum, implement the NAO recommendations. They must end the VIP lane, if they have not already done so, and return to undertaking competitive procurement. They must publish the full details of the companies that pass through the VIP lane, and the sources of their referral. In a number of other countries, including Ukraine and Colombia, details about emergency covid contracts must be published within 24 hours. If they can do it, why can’t we?

The Government must embed open contracting systems into their procurement processes. Their forthcoming Green Paper is an opportunity to go even further, to rewrite the rules of procurement to prevent such flagrant conflicts of interest in the future. I will return to the Green Paper in a moment, but let me briefly talk about the advisory panel that is informing the Green Paper.

The Government’s procurement transformation advisory panel contains some voices that are welcome in shaping Government procurement policy—the University of Sussex’s Centre for the Study of Corruption, for instance, is one of them. However, there are serious concerns about other appointments to the panel, most notably Amazon. Amazon has already been awarded 82 central Government contracts, worth £225 million, in the past five years, and has a deal enabling local councils to buy supplies in one marketplace. The manner in which Amazon is embedding itself into national and regional public procurement is, in the words of Paul Monaghan of the Fair Tax Mark, “truly frightening”.

How can it be right that Amazon should be given such a position of influence over Government procurement policy, while raking in hundreds of millions in Government contracts itself? Considering Amazon’s record on meeting its tax obligations, why should a company that refuses to pay its fair share into the public purse be in a position to profit so handsomely from it? Can the Minister tell me by what process members of the procurement transformation advisory panel were appointed? What steps, if any, were taken to identify and address potential conflicts of interest, and will the minutes of the meeting be published?



In the same week the NAO report was published, the UN published its evaluation of the UK’s implementation of the UN convention against corruption, in which it calls on the UK to take a tougher approach to handling conflicts of interest—especially those at the top of Government. When we look at how other Governments across the world have responded, not only to covid but to procurement specifically, there is a lot for the UK to be embarrassed about. In Sweden, Slovakia, Estonia and Latvia, the number of contracts awarded using open competition went up during the pandemic.

The upcoming Green Paper is an opportunity to put in place measures that would begin to restore some trust in the system. The Government must now consider implementing end-to-end digital transparency for all Government contracts from planning through to tender, award, spending and implementation. The Government must establish an effective conflict of interest regime, including a publicly accessible database of conflict of interest declarations. To support that, they should extend the remit of the independent adviser on Ministers’ interests to give them independent statutory status, including the power to investigate conflicts of interest and to take action.

The Government should look to introduce conditions requiring companies bidding for contracts to meet the highest standards to ensure that they are providing real social value. Companies should receive public contracts only if they meet their tax obligations and environmental standards, and if they recognise trade unions.

This debate goes to the heart of a much wider malaise. For decades now, people have been steadily shut out of decisions affecting their lives. Wealth and power have become more highly concentrated in the hands of a few. Wealth translates to influence, and influence back to wealth. The revolving door between big business, media, finance and politics never stops spinning. The only way to counter that is by deepening democracy and accountability to the public at every level. The Government’s own anti-corruption strategy warns:

“Corruption threatens our national security and prosperity, both at home and overseas. Unchecked, it can erode public confidence in the domestic and international institutions that we all depend upon.”

The obscene profiteering and cronyism that has been the hallmark of the UK’s response to covid-19 has further eroded what little trust people have left in our political system. The need to challenge conflicts of interest, extend democracy and fight for a robust system of checks and balances to hold power to account has never been more pressing.

[Ms Angela Eagle (in the Chair)]

I shall begin by imposing a three-minute time limit on speeches, but I think it will have to go down to two before the end of the debate.

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[Helen Hayes]

I thank the hon. Gentleman, my former colleague on the Select Committee, for his intervention. Cronyism and corruption are different in law. I am talking about cronyism. The important point that was made by the National Audit Office and reiterated in the debate today is that, when the Government have a scenario where normal rules are bypassed because of an emergency, it is incumbent on the Government to have absolute transparency on connections, conflicts of interest, routes taken and the reasons for decisions being made. I am sorry to tell the hon. Gentleman that the NAO has found the Government wanting. What is lacking from the Government is appropriate contrition and an appropriately transparent response to those allegations that the NAO has made.

[Dan Carden]

We know that £1.5 billion of the money spent has gone to companies linked to the Conservative party. Does that not sufficiently warrant a further independent investigation?

[Helen Hayes]

I agree with my hon. Friend’s point. I repeat: with procurement happening so quickly, under emergency measures, the Government should have been creating more transparency, opening up to greater scrutiny, so that the public could have confidence in the pandemic response. Instead, the opposite appears to be the case. Again and again, the Government shrugged their shoulders at revelations of crony contracts and failed to make any commitment even to publish a full list of the companies awarded contracts under the VIP route.

I ask the Minister to answer the following questions in responding to this debate. When will the Government publish a full list of all the companies awarded contracts under the VIP route? Will she explain why the Government again and again failed to meet the requirement to publish contract awards within a timely manner during the pandemic? That was an obligation that was not relaxed by the emergency legislation. Will she explain why trusted British firms were bypassed in favour of companies with no track record of delivery? Will she commit to a full investigation of the extent of cronyism in procurement throughout the pandemic? Most importantly, will she set out what the Government now intend to do to rebuild the trust and confidence of the British public and British businesses in their broken approach to procurement?

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[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Julia Lopez)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Eagle. I thank the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Dan Carden) for tabling an incredibly important debate, and all those making contributions today. I am also grateful to the NAO for the report. The care with which we spend taxpayers’ money matters very deeply to public confidence in Government.

I do not wish this morning to present a carefully constructed political argument that seeks to dismiss the concerns that have been raised. I want instead to be candid about the challenges the Government had to navigate at the height of the pandemic, provide some context to the NAO’s report, and set out what went well and what undoubtedly could have been done better in the period it focuses on, between January and July.

I was on maternity leave at the height of the pandemic and only began my ministerial role in the Cabinet Office in June. As I took on that role, I confess I shared some of the concerns that have been raised with me in the House about the cost and the circumstances of particular procurements. I wanted to assure myself of what had happened and to get a sense of the full story. Today, I hope to share some of that and to be as transparent as possible, but as I do so, I ask hon. Members to keep three broad points in mind.

First, it is very important to recognise the sheer volume of procurement activity in response to this national health emergency. By 31 July, more than 8,600 contracts worth £18 billion had successfully been awarded, some 90% by the Department of Health and Social Care in value terms. That compares with 174 contracts worth £1.1 billion awarded by that Department last year. In other words, there was a colossal upscaling of effort to take this country through this crisis. Of those contracts, the NAO’s report examined just 20. It obviously focused on the contracts that attracted most public interest.

Secondly, due to time pressures, I am afraid I will be unable to address all the comments. I will focus my contribution on the areas looked into by the NAO report. Finally, although it has become a political cliché to say that we have to learn the lessons from particular events, in this case it is especially important that we learn the right lessons. It might make for a snappy headline or an eye-catching political campaign to suggest that the story of procurement during the crisis has been one of Tory corruption, but it behoves us all to understand what really happened, so we do not overlook what needs to change.

At the height of the crisis in April, as the NAO described in its report, health services across the world faced an unprecedented situation where demand for PPE and other medical products far exceeded supply. Faced with these exceptional levels of global demand, the usual vendors in China who service the central procurement function of the NHS very quickly ran out of supply and the world descended on a few factories in that country to bid for available items. In that market context, the Government needed to procure with extreme urgency, often through direct award of contracts, or we risked missing out on vital supplies. It is here that I would like to address the first of several criticisms being repeated here today: that the Government ripped up procurement rules. That is simply not true.

Regulation 32(2)(c) of the Public Contracts Regulations 2015, which predate the pandemic, explicitly allows for emergency procedures, including direct award. No rules were suspended, relaxed or changed. This was just a case of using existing legally compliant regulations for the purpose for which they were intended. Similar approaches were taken by countries such as Japan, New Zealand and Finland.

In a situation of genuine crisis and extreme emergency, when we had to accept or reject offers in a matter of hours or days, it was simply not viable to run the usual procurement timescales, even if we took advantage of accelerated processes, which still require a minimum of 25 days. Hon. Members will recall that everybody in this House was saying, “Get hold of the kit,” including the Leader of the Opposition.

Nor is it the case that the Government cast aside value-for-money considerations. All offers went through the same eight stage assessment process, and where full competitions for PPE were not possible because of time pressures, we examined prices against a rolling benchmark of prices to protect the taxpayer from mispricing. That is not to say that prices were not higher across the board. It was a massively overheated spot market. Product was often going for more than five times the normal price, and that was made worse by the appearance of opportunistic middlemen, who appeared and started to put down deposits on product, then reselling it for very high handling fees.

Of course, the Government would not normally pay those kinds of fees, but procurement teams were left with some very difficult choices. Either we bought the product, as was rightly and vociferously demanded, or we did not get hold of it for the NHS.

This situation was further complicated by what was going on internally, and that is what I mean when I say we have to make sure we learn the right lessons, particularly about the challenges within our own systems. Some 450 people from across government were moved into the DHSC to become a stand-up virtual team to urgently assist with securing PPE. That team is normally only 21 people-strong. In many ways, getting that number of people together was a great feat, but it also meant that there were a lot of people who did not know each other, all working remotely suddenly from home, on a range of different IT systems, with suppliers they did not know, on product with which they were not familiar, in the most highly pressured market of their careers. That was not an easy operating context.

As concern grew about the level of PPE that might be required to deal with the challenge of covid, the Prime Minister put out a call to action, which I am sure hon. Members will all recall. With great commitment and energy, the British public and the business community responded, but that meant that, in very short order, commercial teams were dealing with more than 15,000 offers of help. Frankly, leads were coming in faster than they could be processed, and when they were rejected or if they were delayed, people started chasing through their MPs. I am sure that many of us in this room experienced that.

In order to manage the influx of offers, a separate mailbox was set up to handle this area of work. That is the oft-cited high-priority lane, which the Opposition have sought to portray as much more sinister than it actually was. Far from being a secret referrals lane, that mailbox was in part a triage for directing more credible leads, and in part an engagement communication tool for managing some of the correspondence that was coming from parliamentarians of all colours, including Opposition MPs and peers. As the NAO said, it was right that we sifted the credible PPE offers from the others. The most important thing to note, as the NAO does in its report, is that all PPE offers, no matter where they came from, went through the same eight-stage check, so there was no special treatment for friends of Ministers.

There has been excitable public commentary, which has been repeated here today, and claims that people were 10 times more likely to get through if they had Tory friends. If anything, the fact that that mailbox had a higher conversation rate demonstrates that the initial triage process was working, as those leads were often more credible and proved fruitful once they had gone through the due diligence process. Even so, it is important to note that, of the 493 offers that came through the priority mailbox, only 47 were taken forward. In other words, 90% were rejected. Indeed, more than 20,000 individual product offers were rejected between the end of March and mid-June because of the robust due diligence processes that had been put in place by our commercial teams.

A number of Members have referred to companies that missed out, and a number of vocal companies have gone on television to say that they do not understand why they missed out. The Government do not have a right to reply in those circumstance, because if we were to set out publicly why that company did not secure a contract, we would be betraying commercial confidences.

The existence of the separate mailbox has added fuel to the fire for those accusing the Government of chumocracy, but if they have read the NAO’s report they should have noticed the conclusion, which has been mentioned by other hon. Members and states that

“ministers had properly declared their interests, and we found no evidence of their involvement in procurement decisions or contract management.”

Our own internal audit on PPE has not found any conflicts either, and we have been searching for them.

[Dan Carden]

Will the Minister give way?

[Catherine West]

Will the Minister give way?

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[Dan Carden]

Thank you, Ms Eagle, for chairing the proceedings, and I also thank colleagues across the House for their contributions. I do not think the issue will disappear. Too many millions of people have faced financial hardship and difficult circumstances over this past year, so there is anger out there among the public over what is seen as a chumocracy, cronyism or whatever we want to call it. We know that huge sums have been handed to close contacts of the Conservative party. Although I welcome the Minister’s reply and how she engaged with all the issues, she was not able to explain away the privileged access given to friends and chums of the Conservative party. Following this debate, we need a full public inquiry into covid contracts.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the NAO report on Investigation into government procurement during the covid-19 pandemic.

[Ms Angela Eagle (in the Chair)]

Will Members please leave promptly by the exit door on the left while observing social distancing?

Public Health

Dan Carden Excerpts

Tuesday 1st December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

I will focus my remarks on these health regulations in relation to my constituency. Liverpool, Walton is the most deprived constituency in England. It has the highest youth unemployment in the country, and child poverty is at 40%. The effect of the pandemic and these restrictions, coming on top of 10 years of austerity and cuts, has been to push many more families over the edge and into poverty. We have had big policy announcements from the Government, but the reality for too many people has been little or no help from the Government and little hope for the future. Jobs have been lost, businesses have folded and communities have gone under.

Liverpool will move into tier 2 tomorrow if these regulations are passed. It is the first place to move into a lower tier than it was in before the lockdown. Its mass testing pilot has been impressively delivered by our local public health teams, the council and Mayor Joe Anderson, with the support of armed forces personnel. About 1,000 asymptomatic cases have been detected, and we await the scientific community’s evaluation.

It was a pilot scheme, so there are lessons to learn from it. The first lesson that this House should learn is that a system delivered by local public health experts, as opposed to profiteers led by central Government, is the most effective way to deal with the virus. In the most deprived parts of the city, only 4% of people came forward at first to be tested. I have spent time listening to people locally and hearing about their experiences and what they are facing during this pandemic. They are all too aware that testing positive means losing income if they have to self-isolate. They know that the Government’s eligibility criteria for the £500 payment is far too strict, and they are right: in Liverpool, about 80% who applied were rejected. The discretionary payments, which the local council has more control over, are capped and the funding is set to run out before Christmas.

Statutory sick pay is £95.85 a week—among the lowest rates in the whole of Europe. Put simply, it is not enough to live on. If that was not bad enough, millions are not even entitled to it. Nobody should be forced to choose between protecting public health and their own financial security, but that is the choice that the Government are forcing on the poorest in society.

The Government know they are failing. They know from their own polling that only 11% of people asked to self-isolate are doing so, and it is time that they asked why. Test and trace will work only if everyone is properly supported to isolate. Does it not tell us everything we need to know that, whether it is for the self-isolation grant, the personal independence payment or universal credit, the poorest people, the disabled and the vulnerable have had to jump through humiliating, dehumanising hoops created by Tory Ministers over years to get the meagre levels of support that they are entitled to, while corporate cronies and Tory donors get to jump the queue and are put in the fast lane for covid contracts for literally billions of pounds of public money without transparency, competition or any accountability?

Oral Answers to Questions

Dan Carden Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Dinenage]

I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman is misinformed. We are absolutely committed to making the UK the safest place to go online. The online harms White Paper will set out how we are going to make world-leading legislation. We intend to publish that before the end of the year and the legislation to follow at the very beginning of next year.

[Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

What progress has been made on the implementation of the Government’s LGBT action plan.

[The Minister for Women and Equalities (Elizabeth Truss)]

We want to make sure that everyone in the UK is free to live their lives and fulfil their potential regardless of their sex, gender identity or sexual orientation. We will soon be hosting the Government’s first-ever international LGBT conference to advance LGBT rights across the world.

[Dan Carden [V]]

After an organisation in Anfield in my constituency was exposed for offering “cures” for homosexuality involving rituals and starvation, the Government gave me a commitment in this House that they would ban these so-called conversion therapies. That was back in 2018 and there is real concern that the new Government are backtracking on LGBT rights. So when will the Government bring forward a ban on these harmful practices, as promised in their own LGBT action plan? Following the Minister’s response yesterday on changes to the Gender Recognition Act 2004, which fell well short of what is needed to secure the rights of trans people in the UK, will she make a full statement in the Chamber to allow proper debate on it?

[Elizabeth Truss]

Conversion therapy is a completely abhorrent practice. We are working to end it. We are currently conducting research and I will be coming back shortly to talk about the future and how we do end it, but it is important that research is conducted. As I made clear in my written statement yesterday, it is very important that we protect transgender rights but also improve transgender healthcare. That is what we are doing by opening more clinics and also making the process of gender recognition certificates kinder and more straightforward.

Oral Answers to Questions

Dan Carden Excerpts

Wednesday 4th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

Talent is spread around the world but, sadly, opportunity is not. Twelve years of quality education is a key priority, and I am proud that between 2015 and 2019 we supported 14.3 million girls to gain a decent education, across 70 of our most fragile countries. As another International Women’s Day is before us, we have the opportunity to refocus our energies on making sure that there is not a single girl who is not educated.[Official Report, 17 March 2020, Vol. 673, c. 8MC.]

[Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

I welcome the new Secretary of State to her post. She leads one of the most important Departments, which literally saves lives every day. More than 60 countries across the world have reported at least one case of coronavirus, but, as yet, we have not seen a widespread outbreak in sub-Saharan Africa. What immediate steps is she taking to ensure the preparedness of the world’s poorest nations in the event of such an outbreak?

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

The hon. Gentleman is right to say that the great challenge is to be able to provide support to those countries where their health systems are weakest, should they need that support. Alongside our colleagues at the Department of Health and Social Care, I am working closely with the World Health Organisation to make sure that we can support it with technical skills as well as funding. We have already given £5 million to its initial fund to make sure that it can be as prepared as possible and reach as quickly as possible those countries that will need this.

[Dan Carden]

The situation in Idlib and across Syria has reached a horrifying new level: indiscriminate bombings are killing civilians and humanitarian workers; 1 million people have fled their homes; people are sleeping in freezing conditions; and children are dying. We welcome the Government’s increased humanitarian response, but what is the UK, as a member of the Security Council, doing? When will the Prime Minister play his part to lead diplomatic efforts to protect civilian lives in Syria?

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

The Foreign Secretary is in the region at the moment, continuing to work with regional leaders to try to find ways to move forward supporting the Turkish communities who are looking after so many displaced people. As I said, we continue to be horrified and appalled by the humanitarian legal breaches that are going on, and we continue to provide support. I signed off £89 million last week to make sure that we can provide support as best we can.

Oral Answers to Questions

Dan Carden Excerpts

Wednesday 29th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Alok Sharma]

A successful delivery of COP26 in November is a key priority for the Government, and cross-departmental work is being co-ordinated through the Cabinet Office. It is vital for current and future generations that all of us around the world step up to the challenge.

[Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

Will the Secretary of State clarify what his Department’s policy is on spending UK aid money on expanding fossil fuels overseas?

[Alok Sharma]

I think the answer was given earlier by the Minister of State, Department for International Development, my hon. Friend the Member for Pendle (Andrew Stephenson) in respect of the statement the Prime Minister made at the Africa investment summit.

[Dan Carden]

I am afraid that that is just not good enough. Last week’s UK-Africa investment summit cost the Department more than £15 million of aid money, on a one-day event. I wonder whether the Secretary of State can say now whether any of that money was spent on business-class flights or five-star hotels, because the Department will not disclose the figures until autumn 2021. At the summit, almost £2 billion-worth of new energy deals were struck for fossil fuels. How on earth can he justify using taxpayers’ funds to help fossil fuel companies when we are in the midst of a climate catastrophe?

[Alok Sharma]

If the hon. Gentleman had read the communiqué that came out of the summit, he would have seen not only the billions of pounds of investment, but the UK support going to developing countries. He always castigates private investment, but perhaps he ought to read what the UN Secretary-General wrote in November in the Financial Times, where he pointed out that the private sector is vital to advance development goals. Sometimes the hon. Gentleman needs to read and listen to the experts, rather than to people on his own Benches.