Government PPE Contracts

Debate between Meg Hillier and Angela Rayner

Tuesday 6th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner]

I thank the hon. Member for his point, and he is absolutely right. The Fire Brigades Union members were in Parliament and outside it today. They are frustrated, like many others who have been told that there is not money to give them a pay rise and that, actually, they are going to get a real-terms pay cut. But at the same time, billions of pounds has been wasted. As I said in my opening remarks, £770,000 a day has gone on storing this equipment. It is not acceptable to most people and most members of the public.

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

My right hon. Friend has highlighted one particular legal situation, but I am sure she is aware that the Department of Health and Social Care remains in dispute on 176 contracts for PPE worth £2.7 billion. I wonder whether she has any thoughts about that.

[Angela Rayner]

The Chair of the Public Accounts Committee is absolutely right. It is absolutely eye-watering and astonishing that 176 contracts remain in this situation. The public can see that and they are frustrated, because it is not acceptable and not okay to govern in that way. The public rightly want answers, and they want them now.

The links between the company Medpro and the Tory peer in question were never publicly disclosed. In fact, they were denied repeatedly by the lawyers acting for those involved. We now know that the money ended up in offshore accounts directly linked to those individuals. By their own admission, this was for so-called tax efficiency. It seems that they even dodged paying their own taxes on the profits they made from ours. Only after a long legal battle was it revealed that there was active lobbying from ministerial colleagues for access to the VIP lane and substantial contracts were won by those companies. They said that the peer in question did not benefit from these contracts. That denial has been rather undermined by the latest revelations of The Guardian, rather than any disclosure of Ministers. It was only some time after The Guardian exposed those links that a Minister, the right hon. Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar), finally told me in answer to a parliamentary question:

“Departmental records reflect that a link between Baroness Mone and PPE Medpro was clear prior to contracts being awarded.”

But Ministers have, for months, refused to show us those records or tell us the nature of that link and whether it was declared or discovered in due diligence.

This was the subject of an investigation by the Standards Commissioners in the other place, yet it appears that Ministers sat on the information that they had. The question is very simple: what have Ministers got to hide? Did they know all along who was behind PPE Medpro, or was due diligence so poor that they did not realise the problem? If they had nothing to hide and no rules or laws were broken, Ministers will surely be happy to make the details of the meetings and correspondence available. While they are at it, will the Minister give us clarity about allegations made by the former Health Secretary in his new book about a separate bid for business connected to Baroness Mone?

Standards in Public Life

Debate between Meg Hillier and Angela Rayner

Tuesday 7th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner]

That too is an important point. The opposition to the Prime Minister comes from many different walks of political life—from his own Back Benchers, from some of his predecessors, and, obviously, from Members on these Benches. This is not really a political issue; it is more about the question of what our democracy stands for. If we do not draw a line in relation to these standards and ensure that we hold to them, the public will have a mistrust of politicians, and that is damaging for everyone, not just Conservative Members.

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

My right hon. Friend has talked about the ministerial code, but let us also consider just three of the Nolan principles: honesty, integrity and openness. We know that there are people in much lower offices in public service who adhere to those principles without question and without problems. Does my right hon. Friend find it regrettable that the Prime Minister does not?

[Angela Rayner]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Not only does the Prime Minister not adhere to those principles; he deleted them from his own foreword to the ministerial code, which is pretty unbelievable.

--- Later in debate ---

[Angela Rayner]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. We need look no further than the Prime Minister’s response when it was revealed that the Home Secretary has been bullying her staff. He threw a protective ring around her, pardoning bullying in the workplace and forcing the resignation of his widely respected independent adviser.

Another protective ring was assembled for the former Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, who unlawfully tried to save a Tory donor from a £40 million tax bill on a huge property deal. The former Health Secretary’s sister was handed lucrative NHS contracts while a protective ring was denied to care homes up and down this country, leaving residents and staff locked down and terrified as covid swept through the country. It is one rule for them and another rule for the rest of us.

In fact, the only specified sanction in the new ministerial code is for deliberately misleading Parliament. It is right that the sanction for misleading Parliament remains resignation, which is a long-established principle, yet the Prime Minister is still in his place. He remains in his position, clinging on to office and degrading that principle a little more each day. This Prime Minister should be long gone but, despite the majority of his Back Benchers telling him to get on his bike, he cannot take the hint.

The Committee on Standards in Public Life made numerous recommendations, including a proposal to end the revolving door that allowed the Greensill scandal to occur, but they have all been ignored by the Prime Minister. The Advisory Committee on Business Appointments was already a toothless watchdog, but under this Government it has been muzzled and neutered. Forget the revolving door, we have a system in which the door is held wide open for former Ministers who want to line their pockets as soon as they leave office.

ACOBA used to have the power to issue lobbying bans of up to five years for rule breaking, but as the Committee on Standards in Public Life said,

“The lack of any meaningful sanctions for a breach of the rules is no longer sustainable.”

ACOBA should be given meaningful powers, making its decisions directly binding rather than mere recommendations. We must put a stop to the current provision in the governance code for Ministers that enables them to go ahead and appoint candidates who have been deemed inappropriate by an assessment panel.

Urgent reform is required to the process of making appointments in public life, with a stronger guarantee of independence. A number of direct ministerial appointments are entirely unregulated, which must change. Labour supports the proposal of the Committee on Standards in Public Life to create an obligation in primary legislation for the Prime Minister to publish the ministerial code and to grant it a more appropriate constitutional status. I hope the Minister will take note. There is a precedent, as the codes of conduct for the civil service, for special advisers and for the diplomatic service are all on a statutory footing to ensure serious offences are properly investigated. I am sure he would agree it is only right that holders of public office are held to the same standard.

[Dame Meg Hillier]

In the early days of Nolan, I was an independent assessor of public appointments, which was a role I took very seriously. Has my right hon. Friend noticed the trend in many public appointments to pack the panel with people with a particular political direction? In one case, a sacked special adviser with limited experience was on a panel for an important role.

[Angela Rayner]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. She does tremendous work on the Public Accounts Committee, deep diving into some of these issues.

The Committee on Standards in Public Life concluded that the current system of transparency on lobbying is not fit for purpose. There is cross-party agreement that change is needed to update our system and strengthen standards in public life. Those standards are being chipped away day by day. It is time to rebuild, repair and restore public trust in our politics.

The Committee on Standards in Public Life has a pre-written, some might say “oven ready,” package of solutions, so let us get it done. After a decade of inaction by this Government, Britain is lagging behind the curve compared with our allies when it comes to ethical standards in government. President Biden has committed to setting up a commission on federal ethics, a single Government agency with the power to oversee and enforce federal anti-corruption laws. The Australian Labour party, which is now in government, has plans for a Commonwealth integrity commission that will have powers to investigate public corruption. In Canada, the ethics commissioner enforces breaches of the law covering public office holders.

Far from keeping up with our global partners, this Government have allowed standards in Britain to wither on the vine. The Government greeted the report of the Committee on Standards in Public Life with complete silence back in November. When the Prime Minister finally got around to updating the ministerial code 10 days ago, he cherry-picked the bits he liked from the report, completely undermining its aim.