Covid Contracts: Judicial Review

Bob Blackman Excerpts
Wednesday 24th February 2021

(3 years, 8 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Edward Argar Portrait Edward Argar
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I will not stray near the wilder accusations made by the right hon. Gentleman. What I will say to him is that the data of NHS service users is always protected by this Government.

Bob Blackman Portrait Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con) [V]
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I am a great believer in competitive tendering to gain the right value for money for the public sector. At the height of the first wave of the pandemic, my local hospital, Northwick Park, came perilously close to being overwhelmed by the number of patients and by having only one day’s supply of PPE within the hospital. Thanks to Government actions and the Department of Health and Social Care, that was remedied. What does my hon. Friend think would have happened if the Government had decided to competitively tender all those items and wait potentially three months before the supplies were available?

Edward Argar Portrait Edward Argar
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My hon. Friend highlights the work of his fantastic hospital at Northwick Park and the fact, which I alluded to in response to the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, that while we did not run out of PPE nationally, there were some real challenges at a number of sites. They did an amazing job to ensure that they had the PPE they needed. I believe the minimum time it can take to run a tender is around a month, and I certainly would not have wished to see us not utilising regulation 32 and waiting a month to order and secure the PPE that his hospital and those working in it needed.