EU Exit Preparations: Ferry Contracts

Charlie Elphicke Excerpts

Tuesday 5th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Alan Brown]

I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention. I assume she is speaking in particular about ports in the north-east of England, and it seems that the Department for Transport has not engaged with any of the Scottish ports either. This is all about mitigating things around Dover, which is fine as Dover is clearly the biggest and busiest port, but one way to mitigate the traffic impact at Dover would be to stop as much traffic as possible travelling from the north to the south and to look at these other ports, and doing some real strategic planning. Strategic planning is severely lacking from the Department for Transport.

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

I have listened to what the hon. Gentleman has been saying with great interest. He will understand that, as I represent the constituency of Dover, this subject is very dear to my heart. In any negotiation, we have to have contingency planning. That is very important and it is right that the Department for Transport takes measures to ensure that, if there are disruptions at France, as has been threatened by some French politicians, it has alternatives and different ways of getting goods in and out of the country notwithstanding that. Does he not think that in principle the Department for Transport was acting in the national interest?

[Alan Brown]

We could argue that in principle the Department for Transport was trying to do the right things in terms of contingency planning because, let’s face it, a no-deal Brexit could happen. But in practice, it has been a pure and utter failure—a shambles. That is the difference. Contingency planning needs to be absolutely that—putting in place proper, robust procedures for the contingencies. It is clear that that has not happened.

[Charlie Elphicke]

I am sure the hon. Gentleman has, like me, read with interest the National Audit Office detailed report into this. It goes through the decision making in the Department for Transport and it does not come across to me as highly critical. It highlights that

“The additional freight capacity is intended to allow government to prioritise the flow of critical goods into the UK and to enable imports to flow as freely as possible in the event of no deal.”

It has to be in the national interest that we make sure we get medicines and other critical goods into the country and that we are prepared for every eventuality. Does he not accept that as a matter of principle—yes or no?

[Alan Brown]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for gamely trying to defend the Government position. Fair play to him; he is the only one willing to do that. I would like to see him argue to all the members of the Public Accounts Committee that that NAO report was reassuring and that the evidence it took was reassuring, because that is not what I have heard from PAC members. So again I disagree.

If this were a real and robust process, the Government would have defended themselves to the hilt in court. They would not have caved in and done an out-of-court settlement. Again, that is indicative of where the Government are and the lack of confidence they had once they were eight-balled by Eurotunnel.

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[Alan Brown]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention, which proves either that she does not listen or that the Transport Secretary does not understand the meaning of spending money. It actually resulted in an out-of-court settlement of £33 million, in legal fees—we still have to hear how much—in further risk to the Government and in the due diligence costs. That seems to be quite a hefty expenditure loosely related to the Seaborne contract.

[Charlie Elphicke]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Alan Brown]

This is getting tiresome but, yes, once more.

[Charlie Elphicke]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way one more time. I am glad to see Scottish MPs taking an interest in the matter of trade across the English channel. I am looking again at the NAO report, which makes it clear that the Department considered that it had to use a faster process. He castigates the Department for not advertising the contract and doing the usual procurement, but the report states:

“The Regulations also allow for the award of a contract through a ‘negotiated procedure without prior publication’”,

when time is of the essence. That is clearly what the Department did. Given the fact that the clock is ticking, it is hard to say that that was an unreasonable thing to do.

[Alan Brown]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for trying once more. The EU referendum was in June 2016, and as I have said, the Government are supposed to have been doing no-deal planning for over two years. So why did this suddenly become an emergency issue? At what point did the Transport Secretary go, “Oh shoot! We might have a no-deal Brexit! We need to put in some plans to deal with that.” So again I rebut the hon. Gentleman’s intervention. By the way, it is also a fact that the Transport Secretary did not even bother to visit the port of Dover until October 2018, even though it was supposed to be so critical. Why did it take him so long to go and see those operations in person?

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[Chris Grayling]

Absolutely. All that we have heard for months is, “Why are the Government getting this wrong?” but we have had no tangible or realistic plans from the Opposition. At every opportunity, they simply work to disrupt the Brexit process. Labour stood on a manifesto that respected the referendum result, but the party is doing anything but respecting the result. If it continues to disrupt the Brexit process, it will pay a heavy price in its heartlands, where people voted for Brexit.

[Charlie Elphicke]

I have been reading the NAO report with considerable interest, and it says:

“Over the summer of 2018, government departments stepped up their contingency preparations for no deal.”

The truth of the matter is that Government policy changed in summer 2018 to step up contingency planning, so the Department for Transport acted from that point onwards because wider Government policy had changed from that point onwards.

[Chris Grayling]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, although I must say that we started some of our planning well before then. However, it is certainly the case that last summer, as we saw the progress in the negotiations, the Government stepped up their preparations for no deal, as any responsible Government should. It is quite extraordinary that the Labour party seems to believe that we can just wave a wand and take no deal off the table. We have voted to leave the European Union, and we will either leave the European Union with a deal or without a deal, or we will reverse Brexit. Those are the only three options.

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[Charlie Elphicke]

rose—

[Chris Grayling]

I am going to make a bit of progress, because I have given way many times.

Let me touch briefly on the issue of Seaborne Freight, which was raised exhaustively by the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun, and on which I have answered question after question in the House. First, to be clear, the agreement with Eurotunnel was not about the contract with Seaborne Freight; it was about the procurement process, and particularly about the continuing contracts we have with Brittany Ferries and DFDS for additional ferry capacity into the UK, to provide us with resilience. I have spoken exhaustively in the House about Seaborne Freight. I am disappointed that the contract had to be terminated. I stand by the decision to give that company a chance, particularly since it was backed by Ireland’s biggest shipping firm at the time. We have, as a Government, paid no money at all to Seaborne.

The hon. Gentleman keeps asking me about spending money on due diligence. We spend money on due diligence for contracts that we do not award as well as for contracts that we do award, because rightly and properly in government due diligence is applied to a tender of any sort. That is what we did in this case, and what we do in all other situations. That, again, is the right thing to do.

So it is absolutely clear—I want to be absolutely clear—that when it comes to the Eurotunnel litigation, the settlement struck between the Government and Eurotunnel was separate to the issue of the Seaborne debate, and it was struck, I think, in a way that is designed to ensure that the taxpayer actually receives value through the addition of important facilities at the border that will smooth the flows.

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[Chris Grayling]

Mr Speaker, I simply reiterate: the settlement that we have reached with Eurotunnel is going to pay for improved facilities at the border, to improve flow, to make sure that our border through the tunnel works more smoothly in future, particularly in the post-Brexit world. That is a simple, factual point about the settlement that has been reached.

[Charlie Elphicke]

I thank my right hon. Friend for giving way one more time. He knows that the port of Dover could see the legal risk of the process that he had undertaken, but decided to act in the national interest. Will he make sure that the port of Dover is not in any way disadvantaged in relation to this matter?

[Chris Grayling]

I have to say that the management of the port of Dover have been exemplary for the last few weeks in co-operating with us, not only over this but in preparations for no deal. They rightly judged that it was not in their corporate reputational benefit to try to block the delivery of drugs to the NHS in a post-Brexit world. I am disappointed that not everyone took the same view.

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[Andy McDonald]

That is a fair observation. We have heard that the Secretary of State was prevented from undertaking contingency planning in the first place because of disputes in the Government and that it took the Government to make a collective decision because nobody could come forward to take a decision on this settlement themselves. That really does characterise a Government in chaos and meltdown. Can the Secretary of State say which Departments contributed towards the £33 million? Yesterday, the Health and Social Care Secretary did not know whether his Department had contributed, so will the Transport Secretary please clarify which Department or Departments paid that bill?

[Charlie Elphicke]

Although I do not agree with the action that Eurotunnel took, it has to be said that this £33 million is clearly being invested in border infrastructure. I would like to see and have been calling for similar investment in Dover. Does it not occur to the hon. Gentleman that this money could have been very well spent as “no regrets” spending to improve our border security and trading links?

[Andy McDonald]

I say gently to the hon. Gentleman that that is a ridiculous proposition. Is he saying for a single second that this is wise investment and that it takes a court case for people to come to the right conclusion about investing in our border provision? Is he really suggesting that that is the way to drive public policy? Is he suggesting that we drive Government policy through the litigation process, whereby a claimant puts a case to the Government to say, “This is what you should be doing.”? He cannot possibly sustain that as an argument.

[Charlie Elphicke]

rose—

[Andy McDonald]

I know the hon. Gentleman wants to get to his feet to retract that comment, so I will let him intervene again.

[Charlie Elphicke]

The hon. Gentleman is making a facile point. My point is simply that the Secretary of State, confronted with opportunism, has made the best of a bad job to make sure that the investment is used to the good of the country, not to fatten the profits of Eurotunnel. In a difficult situation, he has done the right thing, trying to act in the national interest while being consistently undermined by the Labour party, the Scots Nats party, the TIGgers and everyone on the Opposition Benches, who have been continually trying to undermine this country’s leaving the European Union.

[Andy McDonald]

If the hon. Gentleman really thinks that expending £33 million when the Government did not want to or need to is a sensible way forward and a sign of success, I really do not want to see what failure looks like. That is outrageous. Saying that £33 million was the maximum amount to be paid implies that payment was conditional on particular outcomes being achieved. There is a lack of clarity on whether the Government can claw back money from Eurotunnel if it is not used on Brexit preparations. So do such provisions exist?

On that point, was the permanent secretary at the DFT correct to say of the Seaborne contract award:

“I am confident that our process was lawful, and obviously the Department and I acted on legal advice in determining how to take that process forward”?

Has the Secretary of State’s Department therefore thrown £33 million of public money down the drain by not contesting Eurotunnel in the courts? Or is it the case that because of the Prime Minister’s catastrophic Brexit negotiating tactics, which have brought us right up to the cliff edge with 24 days to go before we leave with a default no-deal Brexit, the Government’s failure to plan for such a devastating outcome has meant that they have given themselves no option but to pay out this money to Eurotunnel? Surely nothing says more about the shameful and destructive Conservative party than how, in the year 2019, a UK Government are having to make such costly decisions about prioritising medicines over food supplies. This disaster is only of the Conservatives’ own making.

The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care was wrong to claim that yesterday’s urgent question was not related to Seaborne even though the legal action was brought about in response to the award of a contract to Seaborne Freight. He did not explain why, if it was not related, as he stated, an agreement was reached with Eurotunnel now rather than in November or December. It is one way or the other.

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[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown) on securing this debate. He has been far more efficient and effective than the official Opposition, who did not seek this opportunity.

It seems to me, representing one of the channel ports as I do, that the issue is that the people of Britain voted to leave the European Union. Some 17.4 million people voted to leave and we need to make a success of it. They voted to leave because they believed in Britain and in the kind of land of opportunity that we could build. They believed in the kind of future that we could make outside the European Union. That vote needs to be respected.

Having backed remain myself, after the vote I listened to my constituents, who said, “Let’s leave,” and I spent time on contingency planning. Two years ago, I set out a detailed report about how we needed to be ready on day one, deal or no deal; how we could overhaul our entire customs systems, our road infrastructure and our border infrastructure; and how that investment would be no-regret spending because a more efficient border system would provide economic growth. That is not just my case; it is what Jon Thompson, head of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, said in evidence to the Treasury Committee when I raised the possibility of a single Department for borders. That is why I say that it is no-regret spending to invest in our borders, our border security and our border systems.

The shadow Secretary of State rejects as absurd the view that we should make such an investment. No doubt it would not be made by a Labour Government—they did not make it last time, so they would not do it now. They are not serious about border security, and they have a leader who believes that every single migrant should be allowed to wander into the country.

[Andy McDonald]

In case the hon. Gentleman wants to cite my words accurately, I said that the litigation route was a peculiar way of going about investing in infrastructure. Waiting until somebody sues us before we decide what to do—surely to goodness, that is not the way we should go about business when developing policy in this country.

[Charlie Elphicke]

The Labour party failed completely to invest in many things, including border infrastructure, when it was last in power, and it has not been serious about border security and border control ever since.

[Dr Caroline Johnson]

Did my hon. Friend note, as I did, that under the stewardship of the last Labour Government, the UK transport system fell from seventh best in the world to 33rd? Perhaps that is an indication of how well the Labour party would look after our transport system in the future—if it gets the opportunity, which I hope it will not.

[Charlie Elphicke]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. This Government have invested substantially in transport. I believe we need more investment in roads to the ports, as has been set out in transport reports, and in infrastructure at our ports. It is so important, particularly as we leave the European Union, that we invest in our trading systems and ensure that the ferries, the channel tunnel and all other logistics work efficiently, swiftly and well. That is why, two years ago, I set out the fact that we needed to plan to be ready on day one, deal or no deal.

[Alan Brown]

I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s congratulations on securing this emergency debate, which suggests that he agrees that it is needed because the Government are not answering questions properly. He is making a point about contingency planning; I respect the fact that he is talking about planning ahead two years ago and about no-regret spending. Does he know any more than other hon. Members present about what security improvements are coming after the £33 million settlement with Eurotunnel? The Transport Secretary certainly has not explained them.

[Charlie Elphicke]

I do not represent the tunnel, which is in Folkestone and Hythe; I represent Dover. However, I have been keen to press the Secretary of State to ensure that Dover receives similar investment and that it does not lose out, and I look forward to his confirmation that that will be the case.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Away from the party games, we all know that the problems in the British transport system are so intractable that any Secretary of State would face them. Many Conservative Members think that if the rest of the Cabinet had listened to my right hon. Friend the Transport Secretary two years ago and started no-deal planning at the time, not only would the EU have taken us seriously and offered a much better deal, but we would not have made the mistakes that have clearly been made. It is not the Transport Secretary’s fault.

[Charlie Elphicke]

I thank my hon. Friend for making exactly the point that I am coming to. I set out how we needed to invest to be ready on day one, deal or no deal; as I argued at the time, to get the best negotiation, we needed to be able to get up and walk away from the table. I also set out detailed legal reasons why we did not owe any of the divorce bill—another point that was important to our negotiation.

The Government as a whole—the Cabinet—decided not to spend money at that time. The Cabinet decided not to invest at that time. The Cabinet decided not to take forward contingency planning at a substantial level until after the Chequers discussions. To visit that on the Secretary of State would not be fair, right or proper.

[Joanna Cherry]

rose—

[Peter Grant]

rose—

[Charlie Elphicke]

I have given way quite a lot, so I will make some progress.

The Secretary of State has worked hard in the national interest to make sure that contingency plans, once authorised, have been taken forward. I pressed him on the point, because I wanted to see a new route from Dover to Zeebrugge in Belgium, but it would have required a level of intervention that is difficult under the procurement rules. As it was, he undertook procedures that were known within the Department to be legally risky, but were seen as being in the national interest because of the time available. I have to agree that that decision was in the national interest. It would have been very easy for the port of Dover to go for an opportunistic legal action on the basis that it was being shut out of the process, but it would not have been the right thing to do.

Everyone across the country could see what the Secretary of State was trying to achieve: to take pressure off the port of Dover and the channel tunnel in case there were difficulties with France. That was a concern at the time because of the kind of rhetoric that was coming from the French President, Monsieur Macron. Now that things have moved on and we know that the European Union will extend transit on a no-deal basis, the risk of such difficulties is much less, but that was not known at the time. It is right that the Secretary of State and the Department take measures based on the information before them.

[Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)]

I am listening to my hon. Friend’s speech with quite some interest. If he had to choose between the risk of potential legal action and the risk of no medicines for our NHS, would he make the same choice as the Secretary of State?

[Charlie Elphicke]

Therein lies the heart of this debate. The Opposition are saying that the Secretary of State should not have taken this action at all. They are attacking him for taking contingency planning measures.The kernel of their argument is that he was wrong to take them. I think that that is incredibly opportunistic. As I said, he may or may not have been allowed out of the traps as early as many of us in this House would have liked, but once he was away, he took the measures that were necessary.

Beyond the whole issue of contingency planning, some important improvements are needed in our country. The reason we need contingency planning is that we have not invested in our border systems and infrastructure as perhaps we might have done in the past. To set out the case for my constituents and the people of Kent, we need to ensure that our infrastructure is better prepared, because—irrespective of Brexit—we have big queues in Kent and problems on the ferries and in the tunnel.

Contingency planning or no contingency planning, there needs to be investment in more lorry parking in Kent, and the Department for Transport needs to be more effective in taking it forward. The roads to the port need upgrades. In particular, the A2 dualling, which was taken out of the programme by John Prescott in 1997 as one of the cuts in the early days of the then Labour Government, is long overdue and needs to be brought back as quickly as possible. It is also incredibly important that contingency plans work on a balanced basis between the tunnel and the port of Dover.

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that our case is not that there should be no contingency planning, but that if the contingency planning had been done in a timely fashion and under proper procurement rules, it would not have put the Government at the legal risk that has now cost them at least £33 million?

[Charlie Elphicke]

The difficulty with the hon. Lady’s point is that she and her party are trying to lay the blame opportunistically at the Secretary of State’s door. My point is that the Government as a whole should have released the funds and made the decision to invest in our borders. Irrespective of this debate and of Brexit, that investment is in the national interest because our country will benefit from having more efficient, effective, safe and secure borders and from more efficient trading systems. Fewer people will be able to enter the country unlawfully, and people who are here unlawfully can be helped back to where they have come from.

We need to ensure that our trading systems are efficient and effective not just for our trade with Europe, but for the trade that we already do under World Trade Organisation terms. The more efficient we make them, the more economic growth we will get. Again, those are not my words, but those of Jon Thompson in evidence to the Treasury Committee—and he runs HMRC.

[Alan Brown]

rose—

[Charlie Elphicke]

I will give way one last time.

[Alan Brown]

Given that the hon. Gentleman’s robust defence of the Transport Secretary is that the fault lies not with him but with the entire Government, who does the hon. Gentleman think should resign over this fiasco?

[Charlie Elphicke]

I am saying that the Secretary of State is not at fault, but neither are members of this Government. It is too many Members of the House of Commons who are at fault for not heeding the votes of 17.4 million people who say that we should leave the European Union at the end of March. It is about carrying into effect the referendum mandate, which the Scottish National party, the Labour party, the Liberal Democrats and the TIGgers have continually declined to do and sought to stop at every single turn. This House should respect the decision of the British people because this House asked the British people to make that decision; and that decision, having been made, should be respected.

People in this House are at fault, and they know who they are. To a person, those people know that they have not been doing their bit to ensure that we carry into effect the democratic will and decision of the British people. It is entirely shameful of the Opposition parties to have opportunistically attacked this Secretary of State, when the whole House knows that the Secretary of State has been working hard and doing his bit in the national interest to ensure that Brexit is a success and that we are ready on day one at the end of March.

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[Joanna Cherry]

It may have been a nice try, but I am not going to leave this one alone. I want to know how much of that £33 million will be repaid in the event of there being a deal. I think I know the answer: it will be nil. I want to know whether there was any legal agreement that any amount of that £33 million was to be spent on improved security, and if so, to what extent. I will not be leaving those issues alone either today or in the future.

I was the first person, to my knowledge, to raise this issue on the Floor of the House or in Committee earlier this year. When I got hold of a copy of the contract with Seaborne Freight, which was readily available on the internet, I, like any lawyer worth their salt, looked up the public contracts regulations and realised that it looked very much as though the Government had avoided the competitive tendering process that they are bound to carry out under law.

That is why I raised this issue with the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union in the Chamber on 7 January. I am going to go through the chronology because I want to make the point that I have raised at least half a dozen times the question of what was the urgent or unforeseeable event that justified there not being a competitive tender, and that on no occasion have I received the answer that has been given today by the Secretary of State for Transport that it was to do with a decision taken collectively by the Government last autumn to improve the supply of medicines in the event of a no-deal Brexit. The very first time I heard such an explanation was on the television at the weekend, when the Secretary of State for Health used it, and he of course used it again yesterday. However, it is very odd—again, this informs my puzzlement and frustration earlier this afternoon—that we have never heard that explanation before.

Let me go through the chronology. On 7 January in this Chamber, I asked the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union why the contract with Seaborne Freight had proceeded under the negotiated procurement procedure without prior publication—that is to say, not competitively—because it seems to me that it must have been foreseeable for quite a long time that there might be a no-deal situation and it was therefore hard to say that no deal had come out of the blue and was urgent or unforeseeable. I received the usual non-answer from the Secretary of State. I will not bore hon. Members with the contents of the answer—they can look it up in Hansard—but there is nothing about a requirement to prepare for the urgent supply of medicine and, indeed, no kind of explanation at all.

The following day, 8 January, I raised the same point with the Secretary of State for Transport on the Floor of the House. I said I was concerned about the legality of the procurement process, that I had a copy of the contract notice and that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown) reminded the House earlier that day, no deal has always been a possibility because the Prime Minister said right at the beginning that no deal is better than a bad deal. I asked the Secretary of State what the urgency was and whether the Government had set aside any funds in the event of legal action. I got a non-answer, other than to say it was a “matter of extreme urgency”, and there was no reference to the supply of medicine.

The following day, 9 January, I raised the matter in some detail with the Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, the hon. Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris), at a question and answer session before the Exiting the European Union Committee. I am proud to say that the segment where I questioned him went viral on the internet. I asked him a number of times to tell the Committee what the urgent and unforeseeable event was that justified these contracts not going out to competitive tender, and he was unable to tell me.

If the explanation that it had been a collective decision by the UK Government to put these contracts out non-competitively to secure the supply of medicines, I would have expected the Minister in charge of no-deal planning at the Department for Exiting the European Union to know that. The fact that he did not know and, under sustained questioning, did not mention it does raise a suspicion in my mind that it is an explanation that has been invented after the fact, rather than an explanation that has always been the case.

[Charlie Elphicke]

Will the hon. and learned Lady give way?

[Joanna Cherry]

I will finish the chronology, and then I will give way.

That was on 9 January. Later, I put in a written question:

“To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what unforeseeable events led his Department to award contracts for additional shipping freight capacity under Regulation 32 of The Public Contracts Regulations 2015.”

I received the reply:

“A negotiated procurement procedure without prior publication was concluded…to ensure that capacity can be in place in time for a No Deal exit whilst at the same time securing value for money for the taxpayer.”

There was no mention of the need to secure the urgent supply of medicines in the event of no deal, but there was a mention of value for money for taxpayers. Do the Government still think they have provided value for money for taxpayers, given what we have heard this afternoon? I very much doubt it.

On 31 January, I asked the Attorney General about this matter. I asked him whether he was concerned that the Government could face legal action in respect of their failure to put these contracts out to competitive tender, whether he had been asked to advise on the matter and whether any money had been put aside for the contingency of such court action. He fell back on the Law Officers’ convention not to answer that question, but he certainly did not mention that the reason why these contracts had been awarded as a matter of urgency and non-competitively was the need to secure the supply of medicines.

On 11 February, I raised this matter with the Secretary of State for Transport. I asked:

“Will he state clearly for the record, as I have asked this question of him and other Ministers five times now: what were the reasons of extreme urgency and the unforeseeable events that justified his Department proceeding without competitive tendering”?

He said it was

“a change to the assumptions on the levels and length of disruption that might arise in a no-deal Brexit scenario.”—[Official Report, 11 February 2019; Vol. 654, c. 624.]

Perhaps the junior Minister could take a note that I want to know from the Secretary of State for Transport why he said on 11 February that the explanation was a change to the assumptions on the levels and length of disruption that might arise, and why he is now saying that it was a decision back in the autumn to secure the supply of medicines in the event of no deal.

[Charlie Elphicke]

Will the hon. and learned Lady give way?

[Joanna Cherry]

I will finish the chronology, and then I will give way.

Finally, I raised the point again on 14 February with the Secretary of State for Transport, asking him what he meant by a “change in the assumptions”. I asked:

“Would he care to elaborate on exactly what he meant by that? Does he think that that defence will stand up in court?”

Those were my exact words. He said:

“I recall explaining on Monday precisely what the circumstances were, and I do not want to detain the House any longer by repeating an answer that I gave to the hon. and learned Lady three days ago.”—[Official Report, 14 February 2019; Vol. 654, c. 1038.]

Again, he had an opportunity to say that the explanation was a requirement to secure the urgent supply of medicines in the event of a no-deal Brexit, but he did not. In fact, he told me that he had already told me precisely what the circumstances were, three days before, when he referred to a change in assumptions and said nothing about medicine.

I am going to give way to the hon. Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) in a moment, but the point I am making is that this is just an example of the number of times that I have pursued this question. I know that other hon. Members have done so, too, particularly my hon. Friends the Members for Kilmarnock and Loudoun and for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan). They have pursued in some detail their concerns about the supply of medicines after a no-deal Brexit, and never has anyone said to them, “Don’t worry, we so are concerned about this that we have risked breaking the law on competitive tendering to sort it all out.” That is why I am highly sceptical.

[Charlie Elphicke]

I thank the hon. and learned Lady for giving way, and I have been listening carefully to her submissions. The question of purpose is dealt with in the National Audit Office report, which states that the decision was meant

“to prioritise the flow of critical goods into the UK”.

Specifically, the report says that in September and October 2018, the intention was to

“‘ensure that capacity and flexibility exists for government to prioritise the flow’ of certain…goods”.

In November 2018, the Department’s business case was

“to ensure that capacity and flexibility exist for government to enable the prioritisation of…certain goods”.

It seems to me that critical goods were always in the mind of the Department, so I am not sure that her submissions to the House are borne out.

[Joanna Cherry]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that, because he actually reinforces the point that I sought to make. The National Audit Office has that information, and the House of Commons has had it today and yesterday, but my point is that on repeated occasions when I asked a number of Ministers from different Departments what the explanation was for this urgent need to tender non-competitively, not once did any of them mention what we are told was a collective decision to do it for a particular purpose. I therefore question whether that explanation has been invented after the fact.