Randox Covid Contracts

Angela Rayner Excerpts

Wednesday 17th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner (Ashton-under-Lyne) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That an Humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, that she will be graciously pleased to give directions that there be laid before this House the minutes from or any notes of the meeting of 9 April 2020 between Lord Bethell, Owen Paterson and Randox representatives, and all correspondence, including submissions and electronic communications, addressed or copied to, or written by or on behalf of, any or all of the following:

(a) a Minister or former Minister of the Crown,

(b) a Special Adviser of such a Minister or former Minister, or

(c) a Member or former Member of this House

relating to the Government contracts for services provided by medical laboratories, awarded to Randox Laboratories Ltd. by the Department for Health and Social Care, reference tender_237869/856165 and CF-0053400D0O000000rwimUAA1, valued at £133,000,000 and £334,300,000-£346,500,000 respectively.

At the heart of this debate are two very simple questions. Do the Government have anything to hide? And will Members opposite now vote for a clean-up or a cover-up? I say “Members opposite,” but there are not many Members opposite to say it to.

The Prime Minister, just minutes ago, said in answer to my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the Opposition:

“I am very happy to publish all the details of the Randox contracts”.

If that is the case, the Prime Minister should vote for our motion and publish all the documents and correspondence related to the Randox contracts and the dodgy lobbying that went on around them.

The motion before the House is very simple. We already know that the former Member for North Shropshire broke the rules on lobbying. We already know that Randox was awarded nearly £600 million of taxpayers’ money without a tender. We already know that Randox was awarded a second £347 million contract having failed to deliver on a previous £133 million contract. And we already know the decision was made after a conference call involving the then Member for North Shropshire and the then Health Minister, Lord Bethell.

What we do not know is what happened in those meetings, who else was present, what was discussed and what was decided.

[Tony Lloyd (Rochdale) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend makes an interesting point about who was at the meetings. It is not just a convention but an absolute necessity that, when a Minister meets a Member of Parliament or, indeed, an outside body, they are accompanied by civil servants who make a record of the meeting. Can we be certain as to whether the Minister was accompanied by civil servants who took those notes?

[Angela Rayner]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. He has been a Member for a long time, and he is aware these conventions and procedures are there to ensure that process is followed and recorded, but we do not know what was said in any of the correspondence before or after, including from private email accounts and phones. We do not know why or how these contracts were awarded. I hope the Minister for Care and Mental Health can give us some insight. We do not know what rules might have been broken and what role the lobbying of the former Member for North Shropshire played in the Government’s decision.

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

We all know about the failures of the Government’s dodgy crony contracts, which have wasted taxpayers’ money by the billion. Does my right hon. Friend agree that not only should the Government come clean but they should get the cash back to spend on projects like a new hospital for Stockton to help deal with our huge health inequalities?

[Angela Rayner]

My hon. Friend makes a crucial point, and it is why the public are so frustrated. We know there has been waste in some of these contracts, and that money is needed in many parts of our country and in many areas of our constituencies. We know that money could have been better spent, and we know the cost of not doing it properly.

[Chris Elmore (Ogmore) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that it speaks volumes that Conservative Members cannot be bothered to turn up to defend the Government’s position? Does she agree that the reason they have not turned up is because they know what they are doing is wrong? The country deserves so much better than what the Tories are delivering for them.

[Angela Rayner]

I do not think I have ever seen the Government Benches so empty when I have been at the Dispatch Box. It is quite novel. It is not just about respect for this House; it is about respect for the public who are watching and who want to know the answers. They want to know what elected Members on both sides of the House think.

The Government have refused to provide answers to the freedom of information requests on these points, and this is far from the only time that they have swerved scrutiny on their decisions. Take the mystery of Lord Bethell’s mobile, for example. The House may recall that the Prime Minister’s official spokesperson categorically denied that Ministers ever use private accounts for Government business, only for that denial to fall apart. The Government have now admitted in court that Lord Bethell corresponded about public contracts via WhatsApp or text message, and searches of his three private email accounts using covid contract keywords unearthed tens of thousands of messages and documents.

In December 2020, Lord Bethell was told his mobile phone would be searched for documents. Just weeks later, he said he had replaced his phone. First, he claimed his phone had been lost, then he said it was broken and then he said he had given it away to a family member. Finally, nearly a year on, he remembered that he had his phone all along, but that unfortunately he was in the habit of deleting his entire WhatsApp history and, sadly, the relevant messages may have been lost. He said the problem—I am not making this up—was exacerbated by having two phones, a personal phone and an official phone. I can at least agree with him on that; I am not kidding.

[Dawn Butler (Brent Central) (Lab)]

Will my right hon. Friend join me in congratulating the Good Law Project, which started to close the net on Lord Bethell by unearthing all his burner, drug dealer-type actions?

[Angela Rayner]

I thank my hon. Friend for mentioning the Good Law Project. Over the past couple of weeks we have been talking about the sleaze and corruption we have seen. The Prime Minister spoke at Prime Minister’s questions about how sleaze and corruption affect the UK. I say to him and to Conservative Members that it is not the UK that is sleazy and corrupt, as we have seen in how the UK has responded to the sleaze and corruption; it is this Government who are sleazy and corrupt.

[Sam Tarry (Ilford South) (Lab)]

The problem is that the Government are rotting from the head down. The Prime Minister has to get a grip on his own actions, bearing in mind he has appeared before the sleaze watchdog three times and he had a corrupt track record as London Mayor. We cannot stand on a global stage and say we are not a corrupt country until he is cleaner than clean.

[Angela Rayner]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. This goes to the nub of the problem. The Prime Minister—even when asked to apologise by the Leader of the Opposition; even when his Ministers have already apologised; and even when Conservative Members will not attend this debate because they are embarrassed by their Government’s actions—refuses to accept his responsibility. That is why we are calling for transparency today.

[Emma Hardy (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)]

I would like the Minister to think for a moment about the companies that were not awarded contracts. Arco, in my constituency, is known for being the UK’s leader in safety equipment. It had a warehouse full of personal protective equipment that it would have been willing to give to the NHS but, for some reason, it could not find its way through the maze of bureaucracy involved in awarding Government contracts. We hear about companies being awarded contracts that had no record of expertise or knowledge, yet companies such as Arco were denied. How can that be right?

[Angela Rayner]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. We have heard about this distinction from other companies and organisations that have experience in the field; they feel as though they were blocked and there was not a transparent process for them to go through. We have seen concerns about how procurement decisions were being made for companies such as Randox, with the lack of any paper trail showing that they were made properly. How is that fair? The question is very simple: what are Ministers hiding?

[Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)]

Is that not the nub of the point: the fact that Ministers are using WhatsApp messages to make contracts is a way of circumventing the procurement process, which is there to protect the probity of Government spending? That is why we should be challenging these things as firmly as we can.

[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.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am listening with great interest to the very good speech my right hon. Friend is making. I have been in the House a bit longer than her. I came here in 1979 and I have never seen anything like this. It is an honourable thing for every Member to champion firms in their constituency. I tried to help businesses in my constituency to get orders at this time but I could not get through; it was not a level playing field. May I also remind the deputy leader of my party that I have been here all this time and I have never seen this determined boycotting of an important debate on an Opposition day in all my years in the House?

[Angela Rayner]

I thank my hon. Friend for that, and I remind him that I was born in 1980, so I am definitely going to—[Laughter.] I also remind him that I am a grandma and my granddaughter is four next week. He has considerably more experience than this granny, so I will bow to his better judgment on that. It is a shame that so many are not here for this very important debate. It is important because it goes to the heart of what we are here for. People want to see that we are really taking these issues seriously. The public have an interest in making sure that the rules and the transparency that they expect from our Government are upheld.

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that many of our constituents are extremely angry about this, not just because there is cronyism and corruption, but, worse still, because there has been a massive waste of taxpayers’ money? Many of the contracts that the Government let for PPE did not even result in the PPE being provided? What was provided was substandard and therefore it has been a massive waste of our money, which could have been better spent on services in our constituencies.

[Angela Rayner]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right on that, which leads me to my second simple question for the House today. Two weeks ago, the Government led Conservative Members through the Lobby for a stitch-up and a cover-up. Many of those Members have publicly and privately expressed their regret at voting in favour of that motion, and I have no doubt that their regret is sincere. They surely must now look with fresh eyes at those who led them through the Lobby. The Prime Minister brought shame on our democracy and on this House. That vote undermined trust in our democracy and the integrity of public office. So today I say to right hon. and hon. Members opposite: learn the lesson; do not vote for another cover-up.

The first step in restoring trust is publishing these documents today. Taxpayers’ money must be treated with respect, not handed out in backhand deals to companies that pay Conservative MPs to lobby on their behalf. Randox is just the tip of the iceberg in this scandal. Just yesterday, we finally found out the list of the favoured suppliers referred to—the so-called VIP lane for PPE procurement. This is the information that Ministers have failed to release of their own accord, despite a ruling from the Information Commissioner; we found out only because of a leak. No wonder they did not want to publish it. We already knew that those companies that got to the VIP lane were 10 times more likely to win a contract than anyone else. As Ministers have belatedly admitted, many of these did not go through the so-called “eight-stage process” of diligence. We now know how these companies got into the VIP lane in the first place. Not a single one of them had been referred by a politician of any political party other than the Conservative party. Of the 47 successful companies revealed yesterday, the original source of referral was a Conservative politician or adviser in 19 cases. The then Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, the Cabinet member who oversaw the entire emergency procurement programme, fast-tracked a bid from one of his own personal friends and donors, who went on to win hundreds of millions of pounds of public money.

[Dawn Butler]

My right hon. Friend might also reference an article by Sam Bright from Byline Times, who talks about the fact that £1 billion of contracts have been awarded to Conservative donors.

[Angela Rayner]

And £3.5 billion of contracts have been handed out by this Government to their political donors and Ministers’ mates. Almost £3 billion more has been wasted on unusable PPE, which is costing British taxpayers £1 million a day just to store. So, yes, we need an investigation into that, too. We need an investigation into every pound and penny that has been handed out, and to learn the lessons so that public money is not wasted again. But the question before the House today is very simple: do we choose to clean up or to cover up?

[Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. There is one point about the contracts as they stand and another about the situation going forward. Just last week, I had to get a flight back into the UK. I filled in the England passenger locator form and there was a drop-down menu for the day 2 lateral flow test with 15 companies listed. Of those 15, three were Randox. I chose another; it turned out to be Randox. Is this part of a wider scam?

[Angela Rayner]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. The general public are also asking these questions. That is why the question is: do we clean up or cover up? Are we going to have the transparency that the public deserve and that Members from all parties deserve?

I know that Members throughout this House care about our democracy. Although we disagree on many things, I hope we can agree on the importance of trust in our politics and the values of honesty and integrity in public office. A vote for our motion today is simply a vote for the truth, to tackle the dodgy lobbying that has brought shame on this House. The Prime Minister has created a corruption scandal that has engulfed his Government and his party. I have to say that voting for another cover-up today would send a very clear message to the electorate: that the Prime Minister cares more about covering up dodgy lobbying than putting things right—that he cares more about his self-interest than the public interest. After the last two weeks, that cannot be the message that Government Members want to send. I hope they are listening; let us end the cover-up and begin the clean-up.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gillian Keegan]

I do not need any help on the procurement process.

I can confirm that no exception was made for Randox. Of course, Ministers have a role in understanding what is happening with contracts. We have calls and meetings with our commercial partners to find out what challenges they are facing, to drive them to go as fast as they can and to hold them to the commitments that they have made. Such meetings are only natural, but they are nothing to do with the actual contracts; they are to do with delivery and holding our partners to account on their commitments, as is only natural. We have behaved exactly as hon. Members would expect from a responsible Government operating in a national crisis.

The Government do not intend to vote against this Humble Address. We will review what information we hold in scope and—in answer to the question from the hon. Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra) —we will define the scope. We will come back to Parliament and deposit the information in the Libraries, in line with the Government’s established stance on responses to Humble Addresses.

[Angela Rayner]

I welcome the Minister’s comments and hope that that transparency comes forward, but may I just remind her that part of the reason we tabled this motion was that the process was not followed, and there are questions about the process and how Ministers were able to fast-track through a VIP lane.