Covid-19: NAO Report on Government Procurement Debate
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Catherine West
Main Page: Catherine West (Labour - Hornsey and Friern Barnet)Department Debates - View all Catherine West's debates with the Cabinet Office
Covid-19: NAO Report on Government Procurement
Catherine West Excerpts(3 years, 11 months ago)
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Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Dan Carden) for his excellent speech at the beginning of the debate. This is a fantastic opportunity to shine a light on this issue; sadly, the Government have been found lacking.
We know that huge sums of money have been spent since March. The National Audit Office report analyses £18 billion, but we know that the sums are even higher. Due to the economic downturn, serious financial decisions will have to be made in future to protect our public finances, yet so much has been wasted and given away to friends. The need for those financial decisions is made more pressing by the way in which the procurement decisions were made. This is public money, and our communities demand answers.
Since the report came out, the Prime Minister, Cabinet Ministers and Conservative MPs have been at pains to say that the contracts were rushed, but hon. Members should not forget that we had an exercise that showed what was needed in a pandemic. I believe that that still has not come to light. It should be brought to light now so that we can learn the lessons in advance of wave No. 3.
All hon. Members will pay tribute to the civil servants and armed services planners who played a key role in the huge logistical feat of managing. Without their efforts, where would we be? However, we can all remember the moment when we were watching on Sky News the aeroplane about to land, full of wonderful PPE from Turkey. Of course, that PPE arrived at great cost to the taxpayer, only to be found completely inappropriate and not to standard. That is just one snapshot. There has been a litany of errors, not just a few honest mistakes. It is clear that we need a new framework for procurement, particularly in advance of Brexit, after which we will not necessarily have the rigour that European law gives us.
I have three questions for the Minister. When will information relating to the remaining unpublished contracts be released? Will the Government commit to implement in full the recommendations of the NAO report on the rapid awarding of contracts? Thirdly, will the Minister commit to ensuring that all contract decisions will be covered by a future inquiry, with powers to prosecute any wrongdoing?
Julia Lopez
I am afraid I am really short of time. Forgive me; I want to get through the content.
As I say, no PPE contracts were awarded by reason of who referred them. I remind colleagues that, ultimately, there was very little waste. Of all the product in question, so far only 0.5% of what was ordered was found to be unusable. That is not to say that we cannot improve. Admittedly, there was not an adequate stockpile, and the lack of a central stock control system made it very difficult to get a clear grip of the demand signals coming in through the NHS. That is an extremely important issue to rectify.