Covid-19: Government’s Publication of Contracts Debate

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Department: Department of Health and Social Care

Covid-19: Government’s Publication of Contracts

Chris Bryant Excerpts
Tuesday 9th March 2021

(3 years ago)

Commons Chamber
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Edward Argar Portrait Edward Argar
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I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I have set out in my answers that what I think is most important for this country is that we work together— the public, private and voluntary sectors, and the Great British public—as we did, in this context. We have pulled together and done everything we can, including, as he alludes to, building that capacity for UK businesses to meet more of our need for PPE. That is a great success for those businesses and I pay tribute to them.

Chris Bryant Portrait Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
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The Minister is adorable, but I am not falling for that old trick. The truth of the matter is that the Government did not even get PPE out fast enough to people who really needed it, especially in our care homes, which is why so many people died and we have the highest excess death rate of any country in the world. So I am not taking any of this nonsense about how, “We had to focus on that, which meant we could not deal with transparency.” The truth is that they set up a VIP track for some people to be able to get massive contracts, and some people enriched themselves phenomenally during this pandemic, many of whom, surprise, surprise, happen to be Conservative party donors. I have to say that it looks like corruption, and the only way the Government can wipe that slate clean is if they come clean with all the contracts. Otherwise, it just looks like a cover-up.

Edward Argar Portrait Edward Argar
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I will take the hon. Gentleman’s first comment as a compliment, I think, from a colleague I know well. Having said that, I do not recognise his characterisation of what happened. He is right that challenges were faced not just in frontline NHS situations, but in social care. He is absolutely right to highlight that, and I alluded to it earlier, and that is why we increased the number of organisations that we were able to supply centrally from 226 to 58,000. That is why we massively ramped up the purchases of PPE and the stocks of PPE that were available to get to the frontline to ensure that staff could access what they needed to keep them safe. He mentions the assessments of the contracts and how they were awarded. I merely take him back, very gently, to the point that I made to my right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh), which is that these contracts, as set out to the Public Accounts Committee, went through an eight-stage assessment process undertaken by civil servants. I know the hon. Gentleman well, that he would not be impugning the integrity of those civil servants and that he has great respect for them. But I say very gently that there has been no evidence cited and no findings in court of any Minister in terms of conflicts of interest or having behaved inappropriately.