Randox Covid Contracts

Angela Eagle Excerpts

Wednesday 17th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner]

My hon. Friend makes a good point on probity. If Ministers have nothing to hide and no rules were broken, surely they would be happy to publish the details of these meetings and the correspondence. But they have refused time and time again to do so. So today we have tabled this motion and we will put it to a vote, because the only logical conclusion is that there is something to hide—that the dodgy lobbying at the heart of this scandal has played a part in how vast sums of taxpayers’ cash have been spent.

[Dame Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend is making a strong case indeed for reforming this rotten process. Does she agree that when this House granted the Government the powers under emergency legislation to handle the procurement of important medical supplies, it did not expect for one second this orgy of procurement outrages, this feeding frenzy of money for their friends and donors, and the ransacking of public money to help their own that we have seen?

[Angela Rayner]

My hon. Friend makes a crucial point. I say it again: in all my time in Parliament, I have never seen the Benches opposite so empty. I will be gracious to a number of Conservative Members who have expressed, both in public and in private, their concerns about this issue. I urge Members from across the House to look at this issue not in a party political sense, but by examining the damage it has done. The Prime Minister talks in PMQs about the UK and sleaze and corruption, but he has brought that to the UK and has undermined—[Interruption.] Even former Conservative Prime Ministers have raised concerns about the Prime Minister’s conduct. So I do not want to make it too party political, because I can see from the sparseness on the Benches opposite that many Conservative Members absolutely agree with us.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dame Angela Eagle]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. We have just heard the Minister say that there are no minutes of this so-called courtesy call. Can you tell us what we, as Members of the House, can do on learning this through this House, given the astonishing nature of the revelation that the Minister has just made that there have been meetings with no minutes? These are official meetings that involve Government Ministers, and she is unable to locate a copy of what happened at a meeting that clearly took place.

[Mr Speaker]

In all fairness, the Minister should be given time. There are Parliamentary Private Secretaries here, and I am sure that they will have heard and will try to get an answer to the question if we do not have that information. I would expect Government meetings with other people present always to be minuted. If they are not, it opens up another question. I do not want that question to be opened up, as I would prefer it to be answered. Therefore, I am sure that, at some point, we will get that answer. It is a fair point to be made, but in fairness to the Minister, I do not want to end up with a frenzy. Hopefully, some information will be fed back to her—I am looking to the Parliamentary Private Secretaries behind her to see whether it can be fed in at the moment.