Civil Servants: Public Procurement

Baroness Smith of Basildon Excerpts

Thursday 29th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Viscount is referring to local government, but I shall repeat what I said at the start. I believe that we need probity at every level of the public service. He has raised an interesting point about necessity. The current position is obviously that normally, departments require staff to complete a declaration of interest form prior to working on any new procurement and to provide details of any new interest which arises during the course of a procurement. Departments should have appropriate safeguards in place to ensure conflicts are properly managed throughout the procurement. That is good practice and ought to be followed.

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I have listened to the answers given by the noble Lord, Lord True, but I am not sure that he has really understood the depth of concern about this matter. There are two issues. One is that these contracts on Covid-19 for test and trace and PPE were vital to public safety and remain so, and the second is that millions and millions of pounds are involved. The noble Lord says that he is not going to refer to press speculation following the investigation by the Good Law Project, but I would say that it is a little more serious than that. I think he has to be clear that we need complete and total transparency on all of these contracts from the National Audit Office report, which we will see. Is there not a case for a public inquiry or a Select Committee inquiry on this issue as well?

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, one of the delights of the United Kingdom is that the Government are not responsible for the actions of the Select Committees of either House of Parliament. So far as the NAO is concerned, I have already reminded the House that an inquiry is in progress.