Oral Answers to Questions

Edward Argar Excerpts

Tuesday 8th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Chris Loder (West Dorset) (Con)]

What steps he is taking to support the construction of a new psychiatric intensive care unit in Dorset.

[The Minister for Health (Edward Argar)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, not least for providing me with my only opportunity to answer a question on the Order Paper today. I am delighted to confirm that St Ann’s Hospital in Dorset is already part of our plan to build 48 hospitals by 2030—the biggest hospital building programme in a generation. The new build at St Ann’s will provide child and adult mental health services for the people of Dorset, resulting in outdated infrastructure being replaced by facilities for staff and patients that are at the cutting edge of modern technology, innovation and sustainability, driving excellence in this hugely important area of patient care.

[Chris Loder]

I thank the Minister for his hard work in reopening the Yeatman Hospital in Sherborne, which will happen in a couple of weeks for A&E. On top of what he has already offered, which I very much appreciate, will he commit specifically to increase inpatient provision for children and young people in West Dorset with severe mental health difficulties, as we have a number of difficult cases?

[Edward Argar]

My hon. Friend takes a great interest in these matters and, as he will know, the number of places commissioned is a matter for NHS commissioners locally. I reassure him that we can commit, and my hon. Friend the Minister for mental health services is committed, to expanding and transforming community mental health services across England, boosted by an additional £79 million this year, so that children and young people get timely access to the support and treatment they need, without having to be admitted to hospital. That is, of course, alongside the investment to which I have referred for inpatient mental health facilities at St Ann’s.

[Ian Levy (Blyth Valley) (Con)]

What steps his Department is taking to reform mental health treatment.

Kettering General Hospital

Edward Argar Excerpts

Tuesday 8th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Health (Edward Argar)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) on securing this debate about the redevelopment of Kettering General Hospital. I know that it is an incredibly important subject for his constituents and, therefore, for him. He is nothing if not a strong champion for the people of Kettering, as Ministers forget to their cost. He works tirelessly on not only this but many other local matters.

I should also highlight the interest in and passion for this subject of my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone)—who remains a friend, despite him seeking to slightly pre-empt and constrain me today by asking a question of my boss, the Secretary of State, a few hours ago in the Chamber—and my hon. Friend the Member for Corby (Tom Pursglove). As my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough rightly said, due to his elevated position as a senior Government Whip, my hon. Friend the Member for Corby is unable to speak in the debate, but I know from the interactions and conversations I have had with him on many occasions just how passionate he is about this hospital project on behalf of his constituents. I can reassure his constituents that, while he may not be speaking in the debate, I have had many lengthy discussions with him, and I suspect that I will be hearing from him many times in the future—although, hopefully, if I can offer some reassurance to my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering, he may be slightly less vociferous in pursuing me on this matter.

I join my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering in paying tribute to the chief executive and the team at Kettering General Hospital for the amazing work they do. They have worked tirelessly throughout this pandemic for his constituents and those of my hon. Friend the Member for Corby, as they do day in, day out, year in, year out for the people who live in that area. It has been a pleasure to take a very close interest in this matter. As my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering knows through his experience in the House, it is sometimes very difficult to say no to him, which can get Ministers into trouble; he is extremely persuasive.

Turning to the substance of the debate, I am delighted that the rebuild of the Kettering General Hospital part of the foundation trust is part of our plans to build 48 new hospitals by 2030—the biggest hospital building programme in a generation. To kick-start the scheme, Kettering General Hospital NHS Foundation Trust has already received £3.7 million of seed funding to develop its plans for the rebuilding of Kettering General Hospital.

Before I turn to the urgent care hub, my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough highlighted that plans for that had been mooted, discussed and possibly even agreed before 2015—before my hon. Friend the Member for Corby and I joined this House. The difference, I would suggest, is that on that occasion there was no budget allocated to the trust. For the urgent care hub, there is a budget allocated to it now, following our announcement in 2019, which followed lobbying by my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering. That funding will help transform the provision of urgent and critical care in this area. As he says, £46 million has been allocated for that project.

My hon. Friend asks why it is that, 20 months on since that debate and that visit—I remember them well and I will turn to them in a moment—the money has not been fully drawn down. This is in no way a criticism, but I would say that that is because of the announcement of the new hospital programme and the fact that the trust has, quite rightly, changed what it would like as a result. Therefore, discussions have had to take place about how those two funding streams can be meshed together. I will turn to that in a moment.

As my hon. Friend mentioned, the urgent care hub and the new hospital that are to be built share a set of common enabling works that have been factored into the new hospital development. As he and his trust have requested, we have shown flexibility and agreed to mesh the two projects together if an appropriate way of doing so, including the funding, can be found. As a result, the trust is seeking to incorporate the urgent care hub delivery into the wider redevelopment of the site. That means that the UCH may now be part of the first stage of building the new hospital, but he rightly highlights how approaching this in a more holistic way than a “phase 1 and 2” approach provides opportunities and synergies for achieving better value for money. He has made that point to me and to others.

On the drawdown of funding, the £46 million is available, subject to business case approvals and how those two funding streams can be meshed together in a single project. On drawing down from the new hospital programme fund more broadly, we have a one-year spending settlement from the Treasury. Therefore, if we wish to start drawing down from future years funding and make commitments, that is a matter for the Treasury and a future spending review. My hon. Friend quite rightly highlights, as I expected he would, the need for a synergistic approach between the Department of Health and Social Care and Her Majesty’s Treasury.

All of the new hospitals that will be delivered as part of the programme, including Kettering, are working with the central programme team, with the support of regional, system and local trust leaderships, to design and deliver their hospital in keeping with this approach. The central programme team and the new senior responsible officer, Natalie Forrest, who joined the team and took over its leadership at the beginning of this year, are working closely with the trust on the new build at Kettering and considering all the options currently on the table. I understand that they have had productive meetings, and I look forward to their having further productive meetings.

The programmatic approach will need to be carefully applied to these proposals, as for any other hospital in the new hospital programme, to see how we can best ensure value for money for the taxpayer through standardisation of design and the use of modern methods of construction, without unnecessarily constraining the ambitions of the trust’s plans, in so far as that is possible. The central team, as I have said, will engage with trusts to maximise the application of these approaches to ensure that the scheme has manageable, realistic and, indeed, affordable costs. Funding discussions for these projects are ongoing, and final amounts will be determined through the established business case and Treasury processes.

To stray slightly from the central theme, as my hon. Friend will know—as, indeed, he said in his remarks—Kettering General Hospital NHS Foundation Trust also received £1 million pounds as part of the £450 million investment to help upgrade A&Es and to help the NHS respond to winter pressures and the risks of further outbreaks of coronavirus. That funding was used to support compliance with social distancing and infection prevention and control at Kettering.

On interactions and conversations with the trust, as I have alluded to, the senior responsible officer, Natalie Forrest, met the trust on 2 March for a bilateral roundtable with its senior leadership team to discuss its proposed plans for the build. I understand that those discussions were productive, and they are ongoing. I, too, met the trust in February, with the SRO, to discuss the plans for a new build at Kettering General Hospital. As my hon. Friend mentions, I was fortunate enough to visit the hospital in September 2019 to see for myself, and to be shown by him at his most persuasive, what the case for investment was. As he mentioned, I also had the pleasure of answering a Westminster Hall debate last October on the need for the urgent care hub being funded and built in Kettering, during which I also had the pleasure of confirming the funding, following on from the announcement and promise made by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister to my hon. Friend. Today’s debate is probably not the right time to discuss this, but I know that all three of my hon. Friends have highlighted the wider opportunities of combining health and social care for vulnerable adults in Northamptonshire.

Our ambitious programme to build 40 new hospitals by 2030 has confirmed funding of £3.7 billion at this point. That is an important and extremely positive start, but we continue to work with Her Majesty’s Treasury on future funding for the whole programme, including for Kettering, and the profiling of the availability of that funding. That is not the reason I am not, at this Dispatch Box, being gently lured by my hon. Friend into a clear commitment today on firm profiling of financial allocations for Kettering at this stage; rather, it is because deciding the funding level for a project of this scale, at this early stage in the process, before full design, exploration or scoping is complete, would not be the most appropriate approach, although I take his point about, for want of a better way of putting it, the need for speed.

Our experience of Government projects and, specifically, the lessons learned from the early work of the Chancellor’s Project Speed taskforce and from the experts in the Government’s Infrastructure and Projects Authority tell us that confirming funding for large, complex projects too early, before all parties are fully agreed on the future approach, can put the project and its overall cost at risk. I am not in any way questioning the ability of my hon. Friend’s local hospital trust to come up with a costed and extremely effective project plan, but it is important, as he would expect, that we are conscious of the need to ensure that we get value for money and the best outcomes for his constituents.

In conclusion, I pay tribute to my hon. Friend, and to my hon. Friends the Members for Wellingborough and for Corby, for the work they are doing to support the redevelopment of Kettering General Hospital. I know that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State gave the commitment to my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough that he would meet him, and I know that he will honour that. I reiterate my commitment that if any point, on perhaps at a more detailed or granular level, my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering wishes to meet me or the SRO again, I am happy to do that. Perhaps as we see progress made in opening up our country again, I might be able to enjoy the pleasure of returning to Kettering to see him and his hospital trust in person. I look forward to continuing to work with him to making sure that this ambitious and innovative approach to building new hospitals is a success.

My hon. Friend is, rightly, incredibly proud of his team in Kettering. He and his colleagues have done a fantastic job of gently inducting me into quite how fantastic the team are and what is needed to get this project going. It was one of the first visits I made when I became a Minister holding this role, so I have a particular affection for that area—I am an east midlands MP, so I know it well. I hope that we will continue to be able to work hand in hand with his trust, the national programme and Her Majesty’s Treasury to move this programme forward at pace. I know it is what he wants, but most importantly I know it is what his constituents would want and expect of us.

Question put and agreed to.

A Plan for the NHS and Social Care

Edward Argar Excerpts

Wednesday 19th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Health (Edward Argar)]

I start by welcoming the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) to her new post, and I wish her well in it. I apologise to her that she is facing me giving the wind-up rather than the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster or the Paymaster General. However, given her encounter with the Paymaster General yesterday, she might be quite grateful for that.

Since the previous Queen’s speech in January 2020 we have all collectively been engaged in responding to the biggest crisis since the war, fighting a highly infectious and highly dangerous virus that has caused so much disruption to our economy and our society. Everyone has made huge sacrifices to get this virus under control, and I would like, as I often do on these occasions, to once again put on record my thanks to everyone in the NHS and social care, and the entire British people, for the massive part that everyone has played in that effort.

We now have a way out, thanks to the vaccination programme that is making this country safer every day, and I pay tribute to the Minister for Covid Vaccine Deployment, my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi), for his work on that; but we all recognise that alongside that successful vaccination programme we must all, as a society, learn to live with residual elements of covid for some time to come. My right hon. Friend the Health Secretary’s vaccination programme has been the biggest and fastest in British history. Around seven in 10 adults have had a first dose, including my right hon. Friend and me—I resisted any temptation to do so without my top on—and around four in 10 have had a second. As we have rolled out the programme, we have been able carefully to remove some of the restrictions that have been so difficult for us all. Even this week we have been able to restore more of those precious moments, like meeting friends and family indoors or having a pint inside a pub once again. As we do that and take the road to recovery, we must take forward what we have learned about all parts of our health and care system, and draw on the spirit and endeavour that we have seen in our vaccination programme and so many other parts of our response, to make the lasting reforms that will allow us to build back better and make us a healthier nation. There is still a lot to do and there is no time to stand still.

This Queen’s Speech sets out an ambitious, positive programme to seize that opportunity. As my right hon. Friend the Health Secretary set out, we need to tackle waiting lists through our catch-up and recovery plan to support the, I believe, 4.7 million people in England—around February—waiting for treatment. We need to continue to deliver our manifesto commitments of 40 new hospitals and 50,000 more nurses. And we need to level up on the health inequalities that the pandemic has laid bare. To meet that challenge, we have an agenda to transform our health and care system, and to give us those firm foundations that we need to thrive in the years ahead.

We have set out our plans for our health and care Bill to enable greater integration—I saw, in my years serving as a local councillor, as I suspect many colleagues in the House have, the benefits of the NHS, local authorities and social care working ever more closely—to reduce bureaucracy, and to strengthen accountability to this House, so that we can allow staff to get on with their jobs and provide the best possible treatment and care for their patients, and give the NHS and local authorities the tools they need to level up health and care across the country.

We will also give the funding and support to help our NHS recover and deliver the care that people need, bringing the total package of additional covid-19 funding to our healthcare system to £92 billion—on top of the legislation that my right hon. Friend the Health Secretary and I passed last year, which will see funding in our NHS increase by £33.9 billion by 2024.

The virus has attacked many parts of our society and our healthcare system. Before returning to some of the key themes in the health space and the care space, I want to mention some of the contributions to the debate. My hon. Friend the Member for North West Norfolk (James Wild) highlighted the importance of knowing what the bidding criteria will be for the extra eight hospitals that we have committed to bring forward. I know, Madam Deputy Speaker, that you and my hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Nick Fletcher) came to see me earlier this week to talk about your proposals for Doncaster hospitals. We recognise the eagerness of colleagues to know what that procedure will be, and we will be bringing that forward in the coming weeks. I highlight, of course, that that is dependent on the spending review as well.

Let me turn now to the shadow Secretary of State and some of the points that he raised, which I will endeavour to address. He is a good man, and I know that he will still be basking in the joy of Leicester City’s success on Saturday. He raised some important points. First, he asked where diagnostics were in all of this. I remind him that, in 2019, we brought forward £200 million of additional funding to provide around 300 new diagnostics machines, which have already been bought for our NHS, and we have set out plans for the future for 44 diagnostic hubs.

The right hon. Gentleman talked about capital spending. A total of £3.7 billion in the first tranche has been allocated for our 40 new hospital programmes. He will know, because his constituency neighbours mine, that he is one of the beneficiaries of that, with a new hospital in Leicester. I also point out to the shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster that Tameside General Hospital has benefited from considerable capital investment —£16.3 million in 2019 thanks to this Conservative Government and, atop that, there is the £450 million of extra money that we brought forward for urgent and emergency care last year, of which around another £2 million is going to Tameside and Glossop Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust. This is a record of investment by this Government in communities up and down our country.

The shadow Secretary of State was pressed a couple of times by my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge) on whether he supported the use of private sector hospital facilities to help get those waiting lists down. He dodged answering that question. I know that he is a sensible and pragmatic chap, and I know that he will recognise the need, as we do, to use every resource at our disposal to get those waiting list down. I hope that he will not give in to the siren voices of some on the Opposition Benches who, in their comments, have highlighted what I think is a real issue for the Opposition. I am talking about this sort of Orwellian “Animal Farm” type tendency: four legs good, two legs bad; public sector good, private sector bad. It is a binary approach. The reality that we have seen throughout this pandemic is that the key has been partnership working: public, private, and voluntary sectors working together, putting ideology aside to get the best outcomes for patients. All I say is that those who advocate a binary approach are actually letting down our public services. [Interruption.] The right hon. Member for Leicester South is getting a new hospital.

Let me move on now to other contributions. I turn to the hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Anum Qaisar-Javed) and my hon. Friend the Member for Aberconwy (Robin Millar), both of whom gave eloquent, accomplished speeches. I wish that I had been as eloquent in my maiden speech. They are clearly strong advocates for their constituents. I sincerely hope—indeed, I am sure—that we will rightly hear a lot more from them in the future, and that is all to the good of our democracy.

I want to pick up on a couple of other contributions. The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), who is a strong champion of the cause of those with acquired brain injuries and brain injuries, and my hon. Friend the Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare) came to see me relatively recently to talk about the importance of that group of people in our resetting of NHS services and our recovery of waiting lists. Not only do I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman, but I am always happy to meet him to further discuss those issues if he feels that I can be of any assistance.

Turning to some of the key themes of the Queen’s Speech particularly in the health space, the virus, as many hon. and right hon. Members have highlighted, has attacked our population’s mental health just as much as our physical health. On top of the record funding we have already given to mental health—an extra £2.3 billion a year for mental health services by 2023-24, plus the £500 million of additional investment that my hon. Friend the Minister for Patient Safety, Suicide Prevention and Mental Health announced recently—we are determined to address the impact of the pandemic on mental health and wellbeing. I know that that objective and that desire, whatever the party politics that sometimes occurs in this Chamber, will be shared across both sides of this House. While we will rightly be held to account, I hope that we can all move forward in seeking to improve services in that space together. I also hope that we will be able to work together in reforming the Mental Health Act 1983, which, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said, has not been fully updated for nearly 40 years, and in so doing, give people greater control over their treatment and ensure dignity and respect.

As Members have highlighted, there is also more to do so that everyone receives high-quality, joined-up care in our social care system. The Prime Minister and my right hon. Friend have been absolutely clear in their determination that we will bring forward our proposals for reform of social care this year so that everyone receives the dignified care they deserve within a system that is sustainable. While I hope we can move forward together, I will take no lessons from Labour, which, in its time in power, had, in seeking to address this, one royal commission, two Green Papers, and a spending review in 2007 at which it said that it would be the main focus. That is 13 years of consultations and no achievement. I hesitate to draw attention to it, but some of those years would of course be years when the right hon. Member for Leicester South was at the heart of government in the Treasury and in No. 10.

As we do this work, we will be drawing on the considerable strengths that have played a starring role in this pandemic—the technology, the research, and the life sciences so beloved of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State—to drive innovation in our NHS and social care to make life easier for patients and staff alike and to help us all live healthier and happier lives. In that vein, we will, for example, increase public spending on research and development to £22 billion.

It is an honour to make the final contribution to this Queen’s Speech debate on behalf of the Government. We have seen before us a stark choice between a Government with a clear, ambitious vision for our country and its health and an Opposition yet again devoid of ideas, tired and lacking in energy, whose only solution is yet another policy review. That has been the response to the damning verdict of the electorate when they said they were fed up with being taken for granted and let down by Labour. Over the past six days of debate, we have heard about this Government’s ambitious agenda to level up all parts of our country: an agenda to beat this virus and beat it together, and an agenda that will unleash the potential of the whole of the United Kingdom. I commend the Queen’s Speech to the House.

Question put, That the amendment be made.

Air Ambulance Funding

Edward Argar Excerpts

Monday 26th April 2021 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Health (Edward Argar)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I thank the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Martyn Day). As the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Alex Norris), said, when members of the Petitions Committee turn their hands to giving extremely well-informed and erudite speeches on whatever topics come through the Committee, they display a certain dexterity. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk for his thoughtful speech, as ever, and to my hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Imran Ahmad Khan) and the shadow Minister, who made typically measured, sensible and thoughtful contributions to this important debate. Although what goes on in the main Chamber may attract more public attention, I often think that if more people were aware of what goes on in this Chamber, they would find that the tone of many debates is different from the one at the Dispatch Box in the Chamber, and that there is a genuinely constructive exchange of views.

As the shadow Minister said, to date more than 130,000 people have signed this petition, and I thank them all for highlighting this important issue for debate. Like him, I pay particular tribute to Bethany for her work in getting such a huge number of signatures for this petition and echo the words of other hon. Members in sending our sympathies to her family. If I may slightly crave your indulgence, Mr Stringer, although this is not directly related to air ambulances, I will take this opportunity —I suspect it may be the only chance I have to do so before Prorogation—to put on the record the condolences and sympathies of all in the House to the family and friends of ambulance technician Jeremy Daw, who was tragically killed at the weekend when on duty when his ambulance was hit by an object. It is important to put on the record our sympathies and condolences to his family and friends.

I pay tribute, as others have done, to the air ambulance charities and to their critical care teams of doctors and paramedics, who are among some of the most highly skilled pre-hospital clinicians in the world. They are capable of performing life-saving hospital-level procedures on patients at the roadside and saving lives. That includes administering general anaesthetic and, indeed, open heart surgery. When a life-threatening injury or medical emergency happens, patients need to be transferred to hospital as quickly as possible. In some cases, survival can depend entirely upon the vital life-saving work of the UK’s air ambulance charities. Air Ambulances UK figures show that, on average, air ambulance charities across the UK collectively complete more than 25,000 of these life-saving missions a year. To put that another way, as the shadow Minister did, every 10 minutes an air ambulance helicopter takes off somewhere to attend an accident or medical trauma.

Last year, I had the huge privilege of visiting the amazing charity London’s Air Ambulance. I saw at first hand the amazing work of the crew who undertake their life-saving missions day in and day out, working alongside the staff of the Royal London Hospital and the London ambulance service to care for the most critically ill patients. I pay tribute to the team there who showed me around—their comms team includes a former member of a member of my staff who now works there, Kirsty McKellar—for their forbearance as I displayed, shall we say, certain symptoms of vertigo while I climbed a ramp to the top of the hospital to see the helicopter on its pad.

The shadow Minister highlighted the cost of every take-off and every mission, so he will be reassured to hear that I did not avail myself of an opportunity to go up in the helicopter; that would not have been a good use of funds. However, I was able to talk to the team and to see their work at first hand. They were clear that they are incredibly proud of their charitable status and their work as a charity. They quite rightly raised a number of issues with me, one of which I will put on the record now: they ask that councils in London and those who have open spaces are always mindful of the need to try to keep those spaces accessible for London’s air ambulances so they can find somewhere to land in this busy city in which we stand today. I was incredibly grateful to the team not only for showing me around the air ambulance and showing me their procedures, but for their amazing work day in and day out. Indeed, I put on the record my gratitude to all the air ambulance charities.

We recognise that air ambulances provide an invaluable service to our NHS. They support the NHS emergency response on the ground and ensure patients get specialised care in both urban settings and hard-to-reach rural areas. Air ambulances also provide additional support to on-road ambulances at times of high demand through the use of critical care cars to increase capacity and ease pressures on NHS services. Additionally, air ambulance services have supported the national covid-19 response by using their aircraft to transfer patients, doctors and equipment, including medical supplies, between hospitals.

I turn now to the heart of the petition and the debate. Although air ambulances provide services to the NHS, it is right that they are not directly funded by the NHS, and that the majority of their resources are drawn from their fundraising activities. That is something that the air ambulance charities support, as hon. Members, particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield, have alluded to. As the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk set out, it is not about the predictability or certainty of Government funding; there are other things that make the charities support the current model. For example, Anna Perry, the chief executive of the Great Western Air Ambulance Charity, said, “In terms of funding and our day-to-day costs, we value the independence our charitable funding provides us. If we identify that our patients need a different kind of treatment or approach, then we can be responsive to those needs. We cover a diverse area, from the Forest of Dean to Cirencester, and from Bath to Weston-super-Mare, and our funding means we remain flexible and innovative in responding to what our communities need from our life-saving service.”

Similarly, the chief exec of the Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire Air Ambulance said, “While there are benefits to being Government-funded, as an independent, highly regulated charity, we greatly value the ability to be flexible to the changing needs of our patients—for example, by having the ability to quickly adapt to new technologies and medicines. The Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire Air Ambulance”—I believe it covers the constituency of the hon. Member for Nottingham North—“is very much a part of the communities we serve. We are funded by them and are accountable to them.”

I will share a final quote to emphasise the view from the charities. Amanda McLean, who is the chief executive of Thames Valley Air Ambulance, said, “Operating within a charitable model allows air ambulance charities up and down the country to provide efficient, responsive and tailored care to best meet the needs of their communities. By working independently, embedded within our local areas, we are able to collaborate and share best practice while offering a service that is targeted to meet the specific challenges we each face.”

Those are a few examples, and hon. Members have given similar examples from different chief executives of different charities. As the shadow Minister said, it is important that we listen to what the charities that run the air ambulances are telling us.

As has been alluded to, that is not to say that the Government do not provide significant support to the sector. In 2019, the Department of Health and Social Care launched a three-year capital grant programme, which allocated £10 million to nine air ambulance charities across England. These capital schemes provide a range of new equipment and upgrades to support air ambulance services to move towards 24/7 operations, allowing more patients in need of an emergency response to be reached. The funding will also support the modernisation of facilities at seven air bases across England, including building interactive training suites to better prepare crews for challenging conditions, with the addition of seven new critical care cars and a new helicopter.

As hon. Members have mentioned, last year the Government announced a further £6 million of covid-19 emergency funding for Air Ambulances UK to distribute to the air ambulance charities in order to ensure that each charity could continue to provide its life-saving services during the pandemic. Like the shadow Minister and hon. Members who have spoken, I believe that was the right thing to do, as the charitable fundraising activities that they would normally undertake were clearly impacted on by the constraints imposed by the pandemic and the restrictions that were necessary to tackle it. Of course, we support air ambulances through close collaboration with the NHS. For example, NHS ambulance services commonly provide key clinical staff and medical equipment to support air ambulance operations.

Given how vital such services are, it is not surprising that our electors—the public—are keen to see them funded by the Government as part of the NHS. Having listened to the sector, however, our view remains that the charitable model for air ambulances remains the right one—a view that, as I say, is shared by the sector’s independent professional body, Air Ambulances UK. That model has been a long-standing success; London’s Air Ambulance was established as a charity as far back as 1989, and I believe it has now helped more than 40,000 patients.

Decisions on the provision of services for the safe delivery of care are best made at local level. Maintaining a charitable model gives charities and the air ambulance the independence they need, as I alluded to in the earlier quotes, to deliver specialised services tailored to the needs of patients in each locality. A charitable model is also, in many ways, a more feasible way to fund the high capital and revenue costs associated with helicopter emergency medical services, including purchasing and maintaining helicopters. It also gives charities the independence to raise funds through commercial activity and sponsorship with their commercial partners.

Before the pandemic struck, I had the privilege of visiting and—for a brief period—helping in the Birstall air ambulance shop in my constituency, which supports the Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Rutland Air Ambulance service. It would be remiss of me not to take the opportunity to put on record my gratitude to it, as my local air ambulance service, for the amazing work it does, day in and day out, across that part of the east midlands. Indeed, even during the pandemic last year, two new helicopters were delivered to help to support that service. I believe it is the only air ambulance service that delivers a children’s air ambulance service. Let me put on record my gratitude for and recognition of the amazing work it does.

I believe, and the charities believe, that the current model still represents the best route to funding our air ambulances—those cherished institutions—because it gives them local flexibility to do what they need to do. In future, we want to build on the success of air ambulance services and their contribution to the delivery of safe and effective care to the nation. As part of transforming how urgent and emergency care operates, NHS England and NHS Improvement have been working with ambulance services on new ways to deliver care to patients. For example, rather than conveying all patients to hospitals, ambulance services are developing new ways to give healthcare advice through video consultations and by referring patients to a greater number of services in primary care in the community. As we move to a new model of integrated care, each system will have the duty to collaborate with health and care organisations in their local area, including considering how air ambulances can best contribute to their network of urgent and emergency care services.

Essential public donations combined with significant funding contributions from Government—be it for capital or in extremis, as we saw during the covid pandemic—will ensure that the air ambulance charities can continue to provide their world-class care for a patient-centred approach that works for the population they serve. Both the Government and Air Ambulances UK strongly believe that that is best achieved through a charitable model. I encourage everyone to support their local air ambulance charities, even if I do not give in to the gentle temptation offered by the shadow Minister to run the London marathon.

During these unprecedented times, I reiterate my unreserved thanks, and the thanks of all hon. Members who spoke and from across the House, to the staff at the air ambulance charities for continuing to provide their world-leading, life-saving care to patients and their local communities across the UK. They are genuinely inspirational to us all. There is a reason why so many people donate so generously to their air ambulance charities: they know that one day, they could be the one who needs that air ambulance. I suspect that across the country, there is the same huge admiration and gratitude for the fantastic work that these charities do every day.

Elective Surgical Operations: Waiting Lists

Edward Argar Excerpts

Tuesday 20th April 2021 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Health (Edward Argar)]

It is a pleasure, as always, to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McVey.

May I start, as other hon. Members have done, by congratulating the hon. Member for Bootle (Peter Dowd) on securing the debate on this hugely important subject? As colleagues have said, this subject is so important not just to hon. Members, but to all our constituents. Given its importance, I suspect that it will not be in 12 months’ time that we next debate it. I would hope that, in the coming weeks and months, we will continue to debate the progress on reducing waiting lists and getting waiting times down, because that is important. I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman’s typically reasonable and measured tone. I know that he takes a close interest in these matters, working with the all-party parliamentary heath group. If it is helpful to him, I am happy to meet him outside the Chamber to have further discussions about exactly what he said.

I of course join hon. Members in paying tribute to the amazing work of all those who work in our NHS. Once again, I thank them for their tireless efforts throughout the pandemic. Like other hon. Members, I make no apology for reiterating those thanks every time I have the opportunity to do so.

As the hon. Gentleman set out, and as the House will know, our goal throughout the pandemic has been to protect the NHS and save lives. At the peak of the pandemic, we focused on caring for covid-19 patients, while seeking to continue to prioritise urgent treatments such as surgery for cancer and other life-saving operations. The temporary pauses in other elective activity, and the reduction in the volume of such activity, were put in place to limit the number of patients and to help prevent the NHS from being overwhelmed, as well as for infection control. We have to be very clear, however, as hon. Members have been, about the impact that that necessary action has had on many tens of thousands of our constituents. All hon. Members have alluded to the fact that their constituents have suffered not just pain, but anxiety, nervousness and the impact that such delays can have on mental health.

By the summer of 2020, the NHS had started to recover elective activity after the first wave. Having learned from the first wave, it was able to keep elective activity going at a higher level, albeit not as high as some might have wished, through the second and subsequent waves. The situation is looking better for our NHS: there has been a huge fall in hospitalisations and deaths from covid-19, as the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders), alluded to in his remarks, and the success of our vaccination programme means that more people now have longer-term protection from the virus.

Once again, the NHS has done incredible work in keeping as many services as possible going at a time of unprecedented strain. Despite the pressure of the pandemic, by December 2020, the NHS has recovered to carrying out nearly 80% of elective treatments compared with the previous year’s figures. As we continue on our journey to recovery, we must focus on addressing the pressures beyond covid that have been caused by the pandemic. To do that, we are providing the funding, the support for staff and the legal foundations to help our NHS build back better.

We as a Government, in partnership with the NHS, have turned our focus to recovering the activity that was lost following those necessary reductions in activity and, in some cases, the halting of elective treatments. As part of that, we encourage the public to please come forward, through campaigns such as “Help Us, Help You”, and to contact their GP if they are worried about symptoms, especially if they are potential cancer symptoms. The hon. Member for Bootle was absolutely right to highlight that this is not just about surgical procedures in an acute setting, but about the entire patient journey: getting people through the front door of their GP’s surgery; giving them a diagnosis or a provisional diagnosis on the phone, with diagnostic tests; and then the treatment that follows.

We know that waiting lists continue to grow for elective services, as all hon. Members have set out, with 4.7 million people currently waiting for treatment. Of course, we and the NHS are working incredibly hard to reduce that backlog. We will rightly continue to prioritise patients according to their medical needs as well as how long they have been waiting.

We have already seen promising recovery in services—the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston alluded to that—but it is also important that we recognise at this point, as hon. Members have done, the huge strain that staff and the NHS workforce have been under throughout this pandemic. As such, it is very important that in seeking to recover levels of activity, we do so in a way that enables those staff to have the time and space they need to recover physically and mentally from what they have been through.

I want to reassure hon. Members about the funding and the fact that there is a plan. That plan is being developed on the basis of evidence and pilots that we saw undertaken in London, for example, which I will turn to a moment. On 18 March, as part of the spending review, we announced a further £7 billion of funding for healthcare services. Over the next six months, the NHS will receive £6.6 billion to support that recovery. That comes on top of the funding increases that are already hard-baked into the NHS Funding Act 2020. At the last spending review, we announced an additional £1 billion investment to further kick-start recovery and begin addressing backlogs and tackling long waits. Looking at the shadow Minister, I reiterate from this Dispatch Box the words of the Prime Minister making it clear—very clear—that the NHS will have the resources and funding it needs to do the job.

As well as funding, we have been supporting the NHS to innovate because, as has been alluded to, funding alone is not the answer. We need to look at how we tackle the backlog, the care pathways and the approaches we adopt. That planning is already happening, working with the frontline. In elective surgery, the NHS is basing its approach on lessons learned from the London pilot programme that ran in October 2020 to redesign treatment pathways. Of course in that context I pay tribute to Professor Tim Briggs for his work on the Getting it Right First Time programme, which offers a huge opportunity to reform and improve the way we deliver care and those care pathways.

We have seen some great examples of innovation. I spoke to Tim Briggs this morning and he highlighted some of them, such as joint replacements and the impact that treatment can have on people. The Queen’s Hospital in Romford, the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre in Oxford, the United Lincolnshire hospitals and the Royal Cornwall Hospital are all using innovative approaches to try to tackle that backlog. Croydon Elective Centre physically separated emergency and elective theatre units in what was the hospital’s blue zone, enabling it to run at 120% of pre-lockdown activity levels for routine procedures, including cancer, cardiac and hip operations. It is only one example, but it is an example of what the system is doing to innovate and try to get activity levels back to where we would like to see them.

During the pandemic last year, the out-patients programme avoided 18 million face-to-face appointments through the use of virtual appointments and reduced the number of unnecessary appointments, but I take the point made by the hon. Member for Bristol South (Karin Smyth) that there will always be some people or some people’s medical condition that will result in their wanting or needing to see a GP or a practitioner face to face.

On diagnosis, we are rolling out 44 community diagnostic hubs with the plan to deliver over 1 million additional scans and tests across CT, MRI, X-ray, ultrasound and ECGs. These are just examples, but these numbers are already helping the NHS to recover, and they have the potential to play a key part in the long-term approach to tackling waiting lists.

In the few minutes I have before the hon. Member for Bootle winds up, I will deal with some of the specific points he raised on behalf of the Royal College of Surgeons. On the first issue—urgently increasing bed capacity and critical care bed capacity—we continue to work with the NHS very closely to ensure we have sufficient beds to meet future demand, with hospitals flexing their bed capacity as required. It is important to note that one of the points Professor Briggs made to me is that the ability, with modern medicine and approaches, to tackle more elective procedures in day case surgery maximises the use of theatres and eases the pressure on beds. Where previously somebody might have been kept in overnight, the beds can be used for patients having procedures that require overnight stays.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned the consolidation of covid-light sites in every ICS region and talked about widening the adoption of the surgical hub model across all English regions. NHS England continues to design and refine the future operating models in the light of ongoing levels of community infection. The London region pilot has been looking at exactly that model and testing it. We have to make sure it does the job and delivers the results, as we want this to be an evidence-based recovery plan, but the early indications are promising. Using surgical hubs and separating out elective services through hot and cold sites are key components of the London region pilot.

A number of Members rightly said that we must not lose sight of health inequalities in our plan and our approach to tackling the waiting list backlog. We believe that the accelerated restoration of elective services and innovations in primary care will play a key part in improving local health outcomes and tackling health inequalities. That is an explicit part of what I am looking at as I draw up the plan with colleagues.

Finally, the hon. Gentleman talked about ensuring that all ICSs urgently consider what measures can be put in place to support patients facing long waits for surgery. We continue to work very closely on this. The hon. Member for Bristol South is right that many people who are communicating with patients are doing an extremely challenging and sensitive job, so it is absolutely right that we give them the support they need to know how to do it to the best of their ability, so that they, just as much as the patients, do not find it any more difficult than it inherently is. Local systems have been asked to plan their recovery as quickly as possible and in a way that supports those patients through their waits.

On statistics, the shadow Minister was kind to me. He raised a point of order a couple of weeks ago about statistics and over 52-week waits, but he did so very gently. When answering written questions, we are required to use published data, and at the moment it is not cut in the way that he wanted, which is fortnightly or weekly— 52 to 53, 53 to 54 and so on. He raises an important point, and I will write to him shortly to set out what we can do to increase the transparency with that level of granular data in the coming months. Again on a point made by the hon. Member for Bristol South, it is absolutely right that everyone can see what the challenge is at a local level, what approach is being taken to address it working in partnership with those local systems, and what progress is being made against the targets and the backlog.

In the 10 seconds or so that I have before I hand over to the hon. Member for Bootle, let me say that recovery of NHS elective services is one of the greatest challenges, but also one of the greatest opportunities that we have to transform patient care. We are completely committed to building the NHS back better, learning the lessons from the pandemic and doing all we can to ensure that patients—our constituents—receive the best possible treatment as quickly as possible, and that we reduce the waiting lists and waiting times.

Oral Answers to Questions

Edward Argar Excerpts

Tuesday 13th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

What steps he is taking to ensure patients are consulted on the provision of their local health services.

[The Minister for Health (Edward Argar)]

The Government are committed to putting patients at the centre of our health service. Patients are consulted on their local health services in a wide variety of contexts, including through Healthwatch England, the independent national champion for patients. When a major or substantial reconfiguration or change to services is proposed, the local clinical commissioning group is legally required to hold a consultation with local people.

[Steve McCabe [V]]

I wrote to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care about this issue a month ago. Last December, amid the pandemic, Birmingham and Solihull clinical commissioning group decided to close Goodrest Croft GP surgery—which has more than 6,000 patients—in my constituency. The CCG did not consult anyone because apparently it is not required to do so. Does the Minister find that acceptable?

[Edward Argar]

Although I am not familiar with the detail of the specific local case the hon. Gentleman raises, I am happy to meet him to discuss it if that is helpful to him.

Coronavirus

Edward Argar Excerpts

Thursday 25th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Health (Edward Argar)]

This House has come together once again to consider coronavirus regulations. The contrast with the previous occasions on which we did so, of course, is that today we are debating in part the road map to recovery—one that eases rather than strengthens the restrictions we face. It sets out our path to freedom. They are freedoms that none of us would have ever wished to have to curtail, save for the gravest of circumstances, but it is true that, as a country, we have faced some very grave times indeed. It has been a long, challenging year for all of us—individuals, families, businesses—and that was brought home so poignantly on Tuesday, as we remembered those we have lost through the pandemic. We have come a very long way, but equally, we know that those dark days are not that far behind us yet, so the fact that we may cautiously begin to look to brighter days ahead is a tribute to so many.

In that vein, again, I wish to put on record my thanks to our NHS and care staff and, indeed, key workers, as my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire (Mrs Latham) did, for all they have done; and, of course, to thank the British people, whose sacrifices and solidarity have set us on this better course. As more and more of our population heed the call to be vaccinated, we are setting our country up for a safer future, too. So we have much to be optimistic about.

But colleagues will have been watching recent events on the continent with some concern. Not far from these shores, cases are rapidly on the rise. As the Prime Minister recently acknowledged, the wave sweeping through Europe has the potential to

“wash up on our shores as well”.

Equally concerning, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care has alluded to on a number of occasions, are the new variants—many of them, it must be recognised, detected through world-leading British genomics capabilities— which continue to pose a threat to the progress we have made. As we debate easing restrictions here today, our friends in France, Germany, Italy, the Czech Republic and many others find themselves moving in the other direction—tightening lockdowns, extending curfews and shutting down again. That is a fate we are determined to avoid, and one I believe we will avoid if we proceed carefully and follow the cautious steps set out in our road map.

We all want to see the economic and social freedoms and activities that mean so much to us resume as swiftly as possible and, of course, to be able to see friends and family again. As the Secretary of State set out, at each step of that reopening, we are allowing four weeks to monitor the impact of the previous step and one week to ensure that we give businesses and individuals enough notice to plan for the reopening and easing. That timeframe is playing a vital part in ensuring that we are truly on a one-way route to freedom. I make no secret that this is a balancing act, with each step cautiously weighed and considered.

Much of today’s debate has understandably focused on another aspect of the response to the pandemic that we will be voting on today—the six-month review of the provisions in the Coronavirus Act 2020. We have had many passionate and thoughtful speeches. No one wishes the Act to be necessary and to be in place a day longer than is necessary—not me, not the Secretary of State, not the Prime Minister and not hon. Members in this House. Whether one disagrees or agrees with the case put by the Secretary of State—hon. Members will not be surprised to know that I agree wholeheartedly with the case he put in arguing that we should be backing the motion today—I would not for one moment impugn or question in any way the integrity, sincerity or motivation of hon. Members who, from perfectly reasonable perspectives, have set out their concerns about this. However, these measures regrettably do remain necessary. To reassure my hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Sir Graham Brady), I do not believe that there is any desire or intent within Government to in any way normalise such measures.

Let me turn to some of the key specific points raised by hon. and right hon. Members. My hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin) put the case and highlighted extremely well that, while we have made huge strides forward through vaccinations, and we have seen the death rate and hospitalisation rate come down, we are not yet out of the woods entirely. That is why we must, I believe, continue to be cautious and why the road map is necessary.

I would like to say that it was pleasure to hear from the hon. Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon), but I am mindful not to mislead the House. However, I will address one substantive point he raised, when he appeared to be arguing for zero covid. I have to be clear with him, as the chief medical officer has been clear, that such an approach is neither practical nor realistic and we must, as a society, live with residual elements of covid for many years to come. That touches on risk. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Jeremy Wright) and many other colleagues talked about striking the right balance in terms of what levels of risk society is prepared to live with. The Secretary of State alluded to this in his opening remarks. It is hugely important that we weigh up the precautionary approach with the desire and need to open up our economy and society.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire Moorlands (Karen Bradley), the Chair of the Procedure Committee, rightly highlighted our common law approach in this country whereby things are permitted unless explicitly forbidden and said how exceptional it would be to have to change that presumption. Sadly, we have faced exceptional times and that is why these measures have been necessary, but they are not measures that any of us would choose to introduce were we not faced with such a grave situation.

Hon. Members talked about the importance of clear comms, building trust and the right messaging. That is absolutely right. It is hugely important that we set the right expectations and that we are clear with the public about how the vaccine is allowing us to move out of lockdown, but also about the challenges still posed. I have to say I was a little surprised to be lectured by the leader of the Liberal Democrats, the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Ed Davey), on so-called fake news. The irony of Liberal Democrats lecturing the House on so-called fake news will not be lost on hon. Members.

Let me move on to some very serious points as I conclude. My hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine) asked why schedule 22 was necessary. The reality is that, while the 1984 Act gives a considerable number of powers, some elements of critical infrastructure would not be able to be closed, even in the event of an outbreak with a dangerous new variant, under that Act. That is one power that was lacking there that the Secretary of State rightly—I share his view—believes may be necessary, although hopefully it will not be necessary, in that context.

I will make two points briefly in the minute I have remaining. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has been very clear that we have set out the intention to expire around 25% of the non-devolved powers under this Act. If it was possible to do so without incurring that risk and to be ready for all eventualities, I know that he would not wish to see this Act coming before us today for renewal, but it is. It is necessary and, sadly, is going to be necessary for a few more months.

The shadow Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth), talked about the right to protest—I will try to answer this very quickly—and asked what the guidance is likely to include. That essentially is about things such as the need for a formal organiser, for example, and a risk assessment to take place—that is what that is referring to. I commend these motions to the House.

NHS England and NHS Improvement: Mandate for 2021-22

Edward Argar Excerpts

Thursday 25th March 2021 Written Statements

[The Minister for Health (Edward Argar)]

The Prime Minister paid tribute to the extraordinary success of the UK’s covid-19 vaccination programme when setting out on 22 February 2021 his road map for easing lockdown restrictions in England. This vaccination programme would not be possible without the dedication and commitment of many thousands of NHS staff who have already worked tirelessly for many months to support the covid response while doing their utmost to reduce the impact on wider NHS services.

I am today laying before Parliament the Government’s 2021-22 mandate for NHS England and NHS Improvement. It will make clear that covid-19—including further roll-out of the vaccination programme to ensure that every adult in England will be offered a first vaccination by 31 July—remains the NHS’s top priority in 2021-22. At the same time, and taking account of the pandemic’s impact, the NHS will return to implementation of the important transformative ambitions set out in its long-term plan and our 2019 manifesto. These will underpin recovery, and support the NHS’s longer-term resilience and sustainability. There will be a renewed focus on prevention to empower people to live as healthily as possible, and on tackling those health challenges which have been highlighted by the pandemic. The NHS will also work to recover performance of non-covid services that were unavoidably impacted by the pandemic—including elective care.

The new mandate is underpinned by our further funding commitments to the NHS. In addition to the substantial support made available for the pandemic response in 2020-21, and the further £6.3 billion increase in NHS funding already confirmed as part of its funding settlement to 2023-24, we are providing a further £3 billion in 2021-22 to support NHS recovery. This includes £1.5 billion for indirect covid pressures in 2021-22 as well as £1 billion for tackling backlogs in elective activity, and £500 million for mental health and the NHS workforce, for which operational delivery will be agreed in due course. This is in addition to the £6.6 billion announced last week for operationally necessary costs arising from the pandemic in the first half of 2021-22.

As in previous years, I will also today lay a revised 2020-21 mandate. As required by the NHS Act 2006, this revision is to reflect changes to the capital and revenue resource limits included in it that result from in-year funding decisions.

[HCWS893]

Sale of a Credit Guarantee Finance Loan

Edward Argar Excerpts

Wednesday 24th March 2021 Written Statements

[The Minister for Health (Edward Argar)]

In 2005 the Department of Health, as it was then, made two loans under a policy created by HM Treasury called credit guarantee finance, one for the private finance initiative scheme at the Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust for the Bexley oncology wing and the other for the PFI scheme at the Portsmouth Hospitals University NHS Trust for the redevelopment of the Queen Alexandra Hospital. The purpose of the policy was to reduce the financing costs of private finance initiative deals and improve their value for money. An assessment at the time concluded that these objectives had been met.

It has now been agreed that the Department of Health and Social Care will sell its entire interest in the credit guarantee finance loan which was used for the PFI scheme at Queen Alexandra Hospital, Portsmouth.

The credit guarantee loan which was used for the PFI scheme at Bexley oncology wing, at the Leeds was repaid in full in 2017

[HCWS881]

Covid-19: Government’s Publication of Contracts

Edward Argar Excerpts

Tuesday 9th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Reeves (Leeds West) (Lab)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, if he will make a statement on the recent court order regarding the Government’s publication of contracts during the covid-19 pandemic.

[The Minister for Health (Edward Argar)]

Although I am not the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, I hope the hon. Lady will none the less allow me to respond to her urgent question.

The first duty of any Government in a crisis is protecting their citizens, so our work to provide personal protective equipment was a critical part of our response. It was a herculean effort that involved setting up a new logistics network from scratch and expanding our PPE supply chain from 226 NHS trusts in England to more than 58,000 different settings. Our team has been working night and day on this vital national effort, and I can update the House that we have now delivered more than 8.8 billion items of PPE to those who need it. That work was taking place at a time when global demand was greater than ever before and rapid action was required, so we had to work at an unprecedented pace to get supplies to our frontline and the public.

Two weeks ago, in response to an urgent question from the hon. Lady, I updated the House on the initial High Court ruling. I will not set out that judgment at length once again, save to say that the case looked not at the awarding of the contracts, but rather at the delays in publishing the details of them as we responded to one of the greatest threats to public health that this country has ever seen. The hon. Lady’s question refers to a short declaratory judgment handed down subsequent to the original judgment in this matter, which makes a formal order as to the Government’s compliance with the relevant regulatory rules.

As before, I reiterate that we of course take the judgment of the Court very seriously and respect it. We have always been clear that transparency is vital, and the Court itself has found that there was no deliberate policy to delay publication. The fight against covid-19 is ongoing. As would be expected, we are agreeing new contracts as part of that fight all the time, and we will keep publishing details of them as we move forward.

I care passionately about transparency, and so does everyone in my Department. We will of course continue to look at how we can improve our response while we tackle one of the greatest threats to our public health that this nation has ever seen.

[Rachel Reeves]

This question and the answers to it really matter because our frontline workers were not adequately protected with the high-quality PPE that they needed during the pandemic. They matter because it is essential that taxpayers’ money is spent effectively and fairly, not handed out to those who happen to have close links with the party of government.

The Government ran down the PPE stockpile ahead of the pandemic, and that came back to haunt us when we needed it most. Contracts were handed out—many to friends of and donors linked to the Conservative party —without any transparency. The Good Law Project took the Government to court, and on 19 February the High Court ruled that the Government had acted unlawfully, saying:

“The public were entitled to see who this money was going to, what it was being spent on and how the…contracts were awarded.”

Three days later, in this House, the Prime Minister said that

“the contracts are there on the record for everybody to see”—[Official Report, 22 February 2021; Vol. 689, c. 638.]

But they are not. A judge confirmed through a court order last Friday that 100 contracts are still to be published. Will the Minister now take this opportunity to apologise for that statement and to put the record straight? Will the Government now finally agree to publish all 100 outstanding contracts by the end of this week?

For contracts that have failed, will the Minister tell us how much money has been and will be clawed back for taxpayers? Can he tell us which businesses were in the VIP fast lane for getting Government contracts and how they got there? Finally, can he honestly tell our brilliant NHS nurses, now facing a pay cut, that the Government have not wasted a single penny of their money on this curious incident of the missing contracts?

[Edward Argar]

It is a pleasure to be opposite the hon. Lady once again at the Dispatch Box—two weeks after we were last here. I will do my best to answer the questions she raised, not just for my own Department, but more broadly across Government.

The hon. Lady raised a number of points. She is absolutely right to say that transparency matters, because transparency of procurement and transparency in Government is one of the foundations of the trust that is so vital to our democracy. That is why we are working flat out to ensure that, as new contracts are awarded, the contract award notices and other relevant pieces of information are published in line with the requirements of regulations.

What is most important, though, is to recognise the situation that we faced last year, with rising infection rates, rising hospitalisation rates and the need to do everything we could—to “strain every sinew”, to quote one of the hon. Lady’s letters to the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster at the time—to make sure we got those working flat out on the frontline what they needed to keep them safe. I pay tribute to the officials in my Department, who did exactly that: they focused on getting what was needed in bulk in an incredibly challenging global market, to make sure that PPE did not run out.

The hon. Lady quite rightly quoted the judgment, and I will quote paragraph 149 of the judgment—the original judgment, not the supplementary judgment. The judge, Mr Justice Chamberlain, stated that

“the overall picture shows the Secretary of State moving close to complete compliance. The evidence as a whole suggests that the backlog arose largely in the first few months of the pandemic and that officials began to bear down on it during the autumn of 2020.”

I think that recognises the efforts that have been put in place to ensure that we meet our transparency requirements. One hundred per cent. of the Department’s CANs—contract aware notices—have been published.

The hon. Member asked a particular question in referring to my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister’s comments on 22 February—I hope I am correct in surmising that. My right hon. Friend was responding to a question around the failure to publish the details of specific contracts that are subject to judicial reviews. I am advised that, at the time of his statement, the details for all the contracts under scrutiny were published.

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con) [V]]

As the co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on anti-corruption and responsible tax, I think that the Government’s following robust procurement measures is absolutely critical, but clearly a year ago we were not in normal circumstances; most reasonable people would accept that desperate times called for desperate measures. Will the Minister confirm that the Government are now following all normal, standard procurement processes? Will he confirm what percentage of the contracts from a year ago have been fully published and when the remainder will be published?

[Edward Argar]

My hon. Friend highlights the situation we faced at the time. He also, quite rightly, highlights the importance of transparency and complying with all transparency processes. The Government invoked regulation 32, which recognised the exceptional circumstances that allowed for procurement without the usual tendering process. I believe that the usual tendering process could take, at a minimum, 25 days. My hon. Friend recalls the situation at the time. The Government did what we felt was right to ensure that we got the PPE that our frontline needed. The court case also found that there was no policy to deprioritise compliance with transparency regulations. I give him the assurance he seeks: the Government are doing everything possible to ensure that we fully comply with those regulations going forward.

[Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP) [V]]

Some 94% of contracts awarded before 7 October were, unlawfully, not published in time and, as of late last week, 100 are still not published. Some 58% were awarded without a competitive tendering process. There are conflicts of interest, inadequate documentation, a high-priority crony lane and then the Prime Minister announcing that all of the contracts were,

“on the record for everybody to see”—[Official Report, 22 February 2021; Vol. 689, c. 631.]

When he said that, it was simply not correct. Is the Minister not concerned that this failure in transparency, the potential conflicts of interest and a Prime Minister who does not even appear to know what is going on, simply feeds a perception of a Government doing profitable deals with friends and cronies, rather than delivering meaningful transparency that will drive value for money for the taxpayer?

[Edward Argar]

The right hon. Gentleman highlights quite accurately the 94%, which was cited in the subsequent judgment and the order that flowed from it, of the contracts that were late in publication. We accept that that is a statement of fact. The Department has published 100% of the CANs that it is obliged to publish that are related to this matter. He talked about a percentage that were procured without following a normal competitive tendering process—I think he referred to 58% as the percentage that were procured. That is entirely appropriate under regulation 32, recognising the situation we faced at the time and the priority of this Government to make sure that, at pace, we got the PPE that our frontline needed to keep it safe.

On his final two points, I do not see in the judgments in this case or in any of the other scrutiny of this issue by Committees of this House or other organisations anything that asserts or finds that inappropriate conflicts of interest influenced how these contracts were awarded. I am proud to serve in a Government led by a Prime Minister who leads from the front and has done whatever is necessary to make sure this country gets through this pandemic.

[Dr Ben Spencer (Runnymede and Weybridge) (Con)]

This time last year, there was a desperate need to secure PPE urgently when, almost overnight, it became one of the most hotly sought-after commodities globally. I congratulate the Department on its Herculean efforts to keep my residents safe and get them the PPE they needed when the shortage hit. Of course, delays to publication are not ideal, and I am glad that the Department is urgently trying to resolve that. Does my hon. Friend agree that, as part of the review into the pandemic, we need to look at how procurement procedures can be improved when responding to a national crisis or, indeed, future pandemics?

[Edward Argar]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for his work on this issue; he is a strong and vocal champion for the NHS and those who work in it. The context he sets is absolutely right. I will quote from the summary of the NAO report without making a value judgment on it. It highlighted in paragraph 2:

“Demand for PPE rocketed in England from March…There was also a surge in demand in other countries. At the same time, the global supply of PPE declined as a result of a fall in exports from China (the country that manufactures the most PPE) in February.”

That is a statement of fact, and it highlights the context in which we were operating.

My hon. Friend is right: all Governments should rightly look at what they have done and what lessons they can learn, to ensure that they are well prepared for future events.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green) [V]]

On 22 February, the Prime Minister answered my question about unpublished covid contracts by claiming:

“As for the contracts…all the details are on the record”—[Official Report, 22 February 2021; Vol. 689, c. 634.]

Two days later, when the Minister was dragged to the Chamber, he did not tell us about the 100 contracts that were still not on the record. We had to wait for the High Court to reveal that last Friday. Are we expected to believe that the Prime Minister had not sought any briefing after the High Court found that his Secretary of State had acted unlawfully? If he sought no facts, why did he give such a categorical yet wildly inaccurate reply, and why was that inaccurate reply not corrected two days later by the Minister?

[Edward Argar]

At the point in time to which the hon. Lady is referring—22 February, when she asked the Prime Minister her question—I understand that we had published 100% of our contract award notices for contracts of the Department that were subject to the Court case, and I believe the Prime Minister spoke accurately.

[Marco Longhi (Dudley North) (Con) [V]]

Notwithstanding the answer that the Minister gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Dr Spencer), does he agree with my constituents and I that, during a national emergency, the British people want a Government who focus resources on saving lives over prioritising red tape?

[Edward Argar]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for the point he makes on behalf of his constituents. The overwhelming priority was to ensure that we got the PPE in the quantities we needed to our frontline, and we procured that in an incredibly challenging environment. I pay tribute to all the officials who worked flat out to do that. The Court judgment found that there was no policy of deprioritisation of meeting transparency requirements, but it also found as a matter of fact, which is clear in the judgment, that that bar was not met. That is something we have worked very hard on subsequently and continue to do so, to ensure that transparency requirements are met.

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

It feels a bit like groundhog day. Once again, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, who has overall responsibility for procurement, is missing in action, and the Health Minister has come to the House to talk about how breathlessly urgent it all was at the beginning of the pandemic—I do not disagree with that, but it is not an excuse for not publishing these contracts in time. With contracts worth more than £10 billion awarded without tendering action between the beginning of the pandemic and July, seeing that paperwork urgently is more important, not less. If the paperwork is still not being published in time—and this goes back to the problems we discussed two weeks ago—can the Minister not just apologise and give a firm commitment that from now on, every contract will be published in time? It is either insouciance or incompetence that they were not published in the first place.

[Edward Argar]

I have known the hon. Lady since I came to this House, so I will not take it personally if she suggests that, as I am not the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, the import of my answers is in some way diminished. I will endeavour to answer her specific questions. As I made clear, we have published 100% of the CANs that give the information on the contracts awarded—in the context of this case, the contracts awarded by the Department of Health and Social Care.

However, the hon. Lady asked a very fair question at the end about the future, and I can give her the reassurance that this Department is doing everything possible to ensure that it meets those transparency requirements. Officials are aware of them and officials are reminded of them. I recognise the vital importance of transparency, not least for building trust, which she mentioned last time in her question, but in allowing her, the NAO and other Members of this House to do their job, quite rightly, in scrutinising and challenging those contracts and Government decisions, where appropriate.

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

I am quite sure that Ministers want these contracts published, and I look forward to the remaining publications. Will the Minister confirm that in the emergency phase, when it was just desperate to get hold of PPE, all those contracts were negotiated and vetted by independent professional civil servants, and it was not a case of friends of Ministers?

[Edward Argar]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend, and I am happy to say he is absolutely right. He has a lot of experience in government and in this space. All those contracts and all assessments of contracts, whichever route they came via, went through the eight-stage process of assessment by independent civil servants who know commerce and know procurement. I would not for a moment cast aspersions on their judgment, and Ministers did not determine which contracts were or were not awarded in that context.

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD) [V]]

Given the number of fast-track VIP covid contracts that have resulted in unusable protective equipment, will the Minister commit to recovering public money from the companies that did not meet their contractual obligations? Does he agree that those hundreds of millions of pounds might have been better spent on a decent pay rise for the NHS workforce?

[Edward Argar]

The hon. Lady makes an important point about contracts that either failed to deliver or where PPE, for example, did not meet the required standards. I can reassure her that we are undertaking a stocktake—an audit—of exactly that, and we are already pursuing a number of cases where, if PPE was either not to the required standard or was not delivered, we will recoup the money from that.

[Mr Gagan Mohindra (South West Hertfordshire) (Con) [V]]

The Court’s judgment focused solely on the publication of contract notices. It did not make any judgment on the contracting process or on any of the individual processes in any way. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Opposition are wrong to play politics and to misrepresent the Court’s opinion in this way?

[Edward Argar]

My hon. Friend highlights something important, which is what the Court actually did and did not consider. It considered, quite rightly, whether the Government met the simple binary of publishing the notices within the required timeframe, and found that they did not. It did, however, find against the claimants and in favour of the Government that there was no policy of deprioritising transparency and publication requirements. As he says, the Court did not make any judgment on the appropriateness of the awards or the process followed for those awards.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I know the Minister to be a person of integrity and openness; indeed, this is an opportunity for the Government to show that.. Would the Minister once again outline the intention for timely competition in line with the comprehensive judicial review judgment? Does the Minister have any update on any moneys that the Government have been able to recoup from contracts for things that were unusable or incorrect?

[Edward Argar]

I can give the hon. Gentleman the reassurance I have given to other hon. Members. We recognise entirely the importance of transparency. We will comply fully with the Court judgment—the Court order—and, going forward, we will comply with the requirements on transparency. To his specific point, I have alluded to the stocktake—the audit—that we are doing to make sure that if anything was not delivered or was faulty, we can recoup the money for it. I would say more broadly that the Department has cancelled or curtailed contracts up to the value of around £400 million so far—I believe that was in the evidence given by the second permanent secretary at the Department to the Public Accounts Committee chaired by the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier)—and I hasten to add that cancellation of those contracts has occurred for a multitude of reasons not necessarily representative of faulty or inadequate PPE. I hope that gives the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) an indication of the work the Government are doing to ensure value for money.

[Suzanne Webb (Stourbridge) (Con) [V]]

Is it not important to remember that over the course of this pandemic we have created the largest diagnostic network in British history, delivering around 90 million tests and contacting over 9 million people who would otherwise have spread the virus? Does my hon. Friend agree that our ability to set up this network is a testament to the hard work and dedication of our frontline health and care workers?

[Edward Argar]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to highlight this amazing achievement. It reflects on the phenomenal effort of our frontline health and care workers, but also more broadly on the partnership we have seen at work in this country over the past year between the public sector, the private sector, the voluntary and charitable sector and ordinary members of the public all working together in a joint effort to beat this disease. My hon. Friend is absolutely right to highlight that.

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab) [V]]

As much as I have a high personal regard for the Minister, he is incorrect in his remarks. The High Court ruling last Friday made it absolutely clear that at the time of the Prime Minister’s response to hon. and right hon. Members in this House last month 100 contracts had not been published; they were outstanding. Whether intentional or not, the Prime Minister—[Inaudible]—was factually untrue; he needs to come to this place with a full apology, as warranted by the ministerial code.

[Edward Argar]

I lost a few words of the hon. Lady’s question, but I think I know what she was asking about in respect of the Prime Minister’s remarks on 22 February. May I start by saying that her kind words at the start of her contribution are reciprocated? I have known her since I came to this House and I have the highest regard for her as well; so I am grateful for her kind words.

In terms of the specifics the hon. Lady asked about in respect of the Court judgment and the Prime Minister, as I understand it on the date the Prime Minister spoke 100% of the contract awards notices—the details of the contracts are contained within them—were published, and that, I believe, is what my right hon. Friend was referring to.

[Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab) [V]]

Our NHS staff have made huge sacrifices during this pandemic and done all they can to support patients and their families, and now they are delivering a successful roll-out of the vaccine. Does the Minister think it is fair for millions, in some cases billions, of pounds to be spent on contracts that do not deliver but to deny those same NHS staff the decent pay rise they need and deserve?

[Edward Argar]

I am grateful for the hon. Lady’s question. She is right to highlight the amazing work being done in the roll-out of the vaccine by our frontline health and social care workers, and indeed many others, and I join her in paying tribute to them. What is important is that we worked flat out, as did senior officials, to make sure that the NHS and the frontline got what they needed last year: PPE to help keep them safe. I have to say to the hon. Lady that I hear the point she makes, but I make no apology for the efforts made by the Government to get the PPE in the quantities needed to keep our front- line safe.

[Selaine Saxby (North Devon) (Con) [V]]

The British people want us to focus on fighting this virus so we can protect our NHS as we roll out the vaccine and save lives. Does my hon. Friend agree that the political sniping the Opposition are engaging in is the exact opposite of what people expect and want to see politicians doing?

[Edward Argar]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who alludes to the fact that our constituents and the wider public want to see all of us in this House and in Government doing everything we can to ensure, as in the context of last year’s procurement of PPE at the height of the pandemic, that the frontline gets what it needs to keep it safe. Transparency is of course hugely important, but this is not an either/or, and the focus had to be on getting that PPE to frontline. My hon. Friend’s point is absolutely right.

[Martin Docherty-Hughes (West Dunbartonshire) (SNP) [V]]

I believe in restorative justice, which requires the offender—that is the Government—to accept responsibility for the harm it has caused to the principles of contractual openness and transparency. Can the Minister therefore advise the House whether the Government—the offender in this case—accept responsibility for the judgment handed down by a court of law?

[Edward Argar]

I have been clear, both today and, indeed, when I came to the House two weeks ago, that the Government fully accept and respect the judgment of the court.

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con) [V]]

I recognise that the Government have had to take urgent decisions when it comes to some of these contracts, especially when securing PPE at the height of the pandemic, but will the Minister ensure that any new UK health contracts are not agreed or signed unless the business concerned employs a significant amount of apprentices—preferably higher than the public sector target of 2.3%—as part of its workforce?

[Edward Argar]

I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend for that question. I started out in Government as his Parliamentary Private Secretary when he was the apprenticeships Minister, and that is something that he has taken a huge and passionate interest in throughout his time in the House. I am sure that colleagues in the Cabinet Office responsible for Government procurement across the piece will be very happy to have a conversation with him about the point that he has just made as to how greater use of apprenticeships can be baked into procurement decisions.

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC) [V]]

Initially, the Welsh Government anticipated a UK-wide approach to buying PPE; they then took responsibility for their own procurement, but they have still worked with this Government when the opportunity has arisen. Therefore, did the Secretary of State seek the agreement of the Welsh Labour Government before awarding any relevant contracts without competitive tendering or transparency, and did the Welsh Government themselves raise any concerns about the lack of competition on their own initiative?

[Edward Argar]

My understanding is that the procurement process for PPE, as the hon. Gentleman rightly highlights, was a UK procurement process. As he will have seen, we invoked regulation 32, recognising the speed needed to meet the demand for PPE in the frontline, and throughout this process we worked at pace to ensure that the focus was on the procurement of the PPE required. Throughout this process—throughout this pandemic—we have worked closely with the Welsh Government.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

In the middle of an emergency, value for money goes out of the window, and I am sure that terrible mistakes were made in the tendering process, but on the central charge that contracts were awarded to cronies, I am mystified why that should have taken place if civil servants and not Ministers took the decision. Does my hon. Friend accept that the best way to resolve these issues is to take them out of party politics and let the National Audit Office get on with its job? No doubt in time, the Public Accounts Committee will issue coruscating reports that are very wise with the benefit of hindsight.

[Edward Argar]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right to highlight that the decisions, as I touched on and as the PAC was told, were made following an eight-stage process run by civil servants and not Ministers. He is also right that there has been no evidence found, either by Committees of this House or the NAO, or indeed in any court cases, of any inappropriate involvement in terms of conflict of interest by Ministers. On his final point, he is absolutely right, and I know that going forward, as we always do, the Government will look to co-operate fully with the NAO in seeking to supply all and any information that it seeks, so that it can form its judgments and inform the PAC and the House of them.

[Rachel Hopkins (Luton South) (Lab) [V]]

Back in December, in the public interest, not just playing politics or sniping, I and other MPs highlighted cronyism and waste in the Government’s pandemic procurement. Three months on from that Westminster Hall debate, does the Minister agree that responding then, by increasing transparency reporting on those companies that won £1.7 billion-worth of contracts via the Government’s VIP fast lane and were 10 times more likely to receive a contract, would have been better than waiting to be taken to court?

[Edward Argar]

In respect of the appropriateness of contract awards and whether there are any conflicts of interest, I refer the hon. Lady to the answer that I just gave to my right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh). The hon. Lady talked about last December and the debate, I think, in Westminster Hall—although I could be wrong on that—where this was discussed, and I point her to the lines used by the judge in his judgment:

“The evidence as a whole suggests that the backlog arose largely in the first few months of the pandemic and that officials began to bear down on it during the autumn of 2020.”

At the time that she was speaking of—in December—the judge acknowledged that the Department and the Government were working at pace to meet their transparency requirements, so that was already being done.

[Craig Whittaker (Calder Valley) (Con) [V]]

In the teeth of the global pandemic and facing unprecedented global demand for vital supplies, does my hon. Friend agree that the Government’s ability to secure over 32 billion items of PPE— including many items supplied from businesses in the Calder Valley and Leeds West, all stepping up to the plate—is a testament to the hard work and ingenuity of British businesses and should be celebrated?

[Edward Argar]

My hon. Friend is absolutely spot on. He is right to highlight the amazing effort by British business and by businesses that stepped up in this country’s hour of need to repurpose their production lines and to source PPE. Indeed, I would include in that the work of my officials and officials in the Cabinet Office to make sure that it was bought and procured and that it got to the frontline. To cite one statistic that alludes to exactly what he is saying, we have moved from 1% of this country’s needed PPE being produced in this country to 70%, and that is testament to the amazing ingenuity and hard work of British business.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

Yesterday, the Minister’s Department answered a named day question that I tabled on 1 December 2020 about some of its multimillion- pound contracts with management consultants. The Government either have something to hide or they are staggeringly incompetent, so will the Minister see that I get answers to the further questions on consultants tabled on 19 January? And will the Government now support my Freedom of Information (Extension) Bill, which they blocked back in 2017 and which would make private companies winning public contracts subject to the Freedom of Information Act?

[Edward Argar]

The hon. Gentleman made two points. On the latter, the Government will always look very carefully at anything he suggests to them. On the former, very serious point, if he is able to let me know, after this session in the House, the written parliamentary question numbers, I will endeavour to have them looked at and a response expedited for him.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

Crisis situations such as the present pandemic often require action, not paper, and the ends can justify the means. Does the Minister agree that sending PPE out to users was the Government’s top priority and getting right the supporting paperwork, which can be filed later, should not jeopardise that speed of delivery?

[Edward Argar]

I am grateful to my right hon. and gallant Friend for his question. He is absolutely right to highlight that our No. 1 priority, as I think the people of this country and Members of this House would expect, was, in the face of an unprecedented demand for PPE, that this Government did everything that they could to massively ramp up the supplies of PPE that were available and to get them to the frontline. Of course, transparency is hugely important and the court did find that there was no policy to deprioritise compliance with transparency regulations and requirements. However, he is absolutely right to highlight that the absolute priority must be to get the kit to save lives.

[Zarah Sultana (Coventry South) (Lab) [V]]

It has been revealed that almost £2 billion has been handed to Conservative party friends and donors in dodgy covid contracts. That includes the likes of Steve Parkin, who has donated over £500,000 to the Conservatives. He is the chairman of Clipper Logistics, which was awarded a £1.3 million PPE contract. Another Tory donor, David Meller, has given £65,000 to the Tories over the past decade. His company, Meller Designs, was awarded PPE contracts worth over £150 million. Those people did not get rich giving their money away for nothing, so does the Minister believe that it is appropriate for the Conservative Government to hand out fortunes—public money—to Conservative party donors?

[Edward Argar]

I refer the hon. Lady, once again, to the answer I gave to my right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough. I also highlight that, to the best of my recollection, no court and no Committee of this House has found any evidence of inappropriate conflicts of interest or inappropriate involvement by Ministers in the award of contracts. What I would say to her in conclusion is that what matters here is whether companies supply what is needed to standard. I pay tribute to all companies who came on board, stepped up and did what was necessary to help us get the kit we needed to protect those on the frontline.

[Scott Benton (Blackpool South) (Con)]

The vast majority of people in Blackpool can understand the exceptional circumstances which led to this paperwork being submitted slightly late. How many people does my hon. Friend estimate came to direct harm because of a late submission of that paperwork, as opposed to those people who would have come to direct harm had PPE and medical supplies been delivered late?

[Edward Argar]

My hon. Friend makes an important point in his usual very forthright and clear way. The priority for this Government and for those working for them was to get the PPE needed in the quantities needed to be able to get it to the frontline to save lives. Transparency is important, of course it is. I recognise that and that is why we have worked since that time to get everything up to date in terms of transparency. But I make no apologies for the amazing effort that the Government and, most importantly, those working for them—the civil servants who did this work—put in to get the PPE in the quantities we needed.

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP) [V]]

Despite the Minister’s protestations and despite the huge amount of money that was spent, the fact is that for those working in the social care part of health and social care, the equipment did not get anywhere near the frontline anywhere like on time. I think the Minister is maybe glossing over the fact that, although supplies to the health service seemed to have been okay, supplies to the social care sector were desperately inadequate. A Public Accounts Committee report, endorsed by its members, a majority of whom are Government supporters, found that the Department had wasted hundreds of millions of pounds on equipment that was of poor quality and could not be used. We were also told by the Cabinet Office that it did not know how many contracts had essentially been approved after the work had started and how many contractors were only checked out for suitability after they had been given their contracts. Does the Minister not understand that all of that taken together creates a bad smell? Does he agree that the best way to get rid of that bad smell is to have everything published, including assessments of conflicts of interest and information that in normal circumstances might be termed or deemed to be commercially confidential? Does he not understand that confidence in public procurement by the British Government—

[Mr Speaker]

Order.

[Edward Argar]

I will endeavour to give a short answer to a long question. Two key points there. The hon. Gentleman mentions social care and he is right to do that. The focus of some of the questioning has been around the frontline in the NHS, but he is absolutely right to talk about social care. That is why we went from a supply chain where we were supplying PPE to 226 NHS trusts in England to 58,000 organisations. Historically, social care settings had procured their own PPE on the open market. We recognised the pressures on that market—price pressures and demand pressures—which was why we expanded the supply chain to ensure that 58,000 settings ended up being able to access it.

On the hon. Gentleman’s final point, very briefly, he talks about money spent on contracts where they were either not fulfilled or did not meet the relevant quality criteria. I have already set out to the House the steps the Government are taking to review and audit those, and we will recoup money where appropriate to do so.

[Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con) [V]]

Mr Speaker, do you recall photographs, back in the dark days of March, April and May last year, of nurses wearing bin liners, photographs taken in Spain, Italy and the United States? In fact, if I had not been banned from having a backdrop of Lichfield cathedral on Zoom, I could actually pop up those photographs from The New York Times. Does my hon. Friend the Minister not agree with me that the priority must be for the delivery of the PPE, and that these rather unpleasant Labour slurs actually do no good at all?

[Edward Argar]

It is a pleasure to see my hon. Friend, and I hope it will not be too long before we see him in person in the House again. He is absolutely right to highlight the overall priority as being to get the PPE to the frontline. He highlights clearly the situation we were seeing on our televisions every day—for example, the real challenges at hospitals in Bergamo and elsewhere. That was the context at that time in Europe, and we moved heaven and earth to try to get the PPE needed in time. We did not run out of PPE in this country, but it would be fair to say that there were shortages in particular situations. These were met by the Government through the national shortage response. It was in that context that we had to do everything we possibly could, and I pay tribute to the officials who did it to procure PPE in bulk in an incredibly overheated and challenging global market.

[Jeff Smith (Manchester, Withington) (Lab)]

The Minister rightly said that transparency mattered, so when will the Government publish the full details and criteria of how businesses got into the fast lane?

[Edward Argar]

As I alluded to on the previous occasion I came to this House to answer questions on this matter, we set out that some contracts were put forward by Members of this House and by Members of the other place and were assessed through the fast-track priority lane, but there was no difference in the approach taken—the eight stages that all those contracts had to pass through to be awarded. They were all assessed independently by civil servants, so they all went through the same process, and those contracts that were awarded and that met the rules for the contract award notices publication will be published, and have been published, under the CAN regulations and on the website.

[Alexander Stafford (Rother Valley) (Con) [V]]

At the start of the pandemic, just 1% of PPE in the UK was made here in this country. Now, 70% of it is made in the UK, which is a huge achievement. Does my hon. Friend agree that our rapid response to procuring and delivering PPE to frontline workers has been essential in keeping them and others safe? Will he work even harder to increase the percentage so that even more PPE is made in the UK, perhaps by focusing on areas with a textile heritage such as Thurcroft and Dinnington here in Rother Valley?

[Edward Argar]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. For our businesses to go from a capacity to produce this country’s PPE of 1% to 70% is an incredible achievement, but we must not rest on our laurels. We must continue to work with British business to allow it to continue to innovate and develop its ability to meet UK need. I pay tribute to the businesses in his constituency of Rother Valley for the work they did in helping out this country when it needed it most.

[Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)]

The simple truth is that businesses up and down the country feel as though they were misled by the Government. They were encouraged to get behind the PPE challenge, and they made capital investments to expand their capacity to manufacture, yet we know that Government middlemen mates were 10 times more likely than they were to win contracts. So can the Minister set out when he will publish the details of all the contracts, including when the principal businesses were established and what the duration of the contracts are?

[Edward Argar]

The Government will meet their legal obligations to publish contracts under regulation 50 and the requirements that that places on us for the information that needs to be published. Those that meet the criteria for a CAN—a contract award notice—under that, and that have been awarded by the Department of Health and Social Care directly, have been published. All contracts will be published—all details under CANs will be published—where that is required by the regulation, and the information specified as to what is published in a CAN notice is of a standard format. We will continue to meet that obligation.

[Mike Wood (Dudley South) (Con) [V]]

Does my hon. Friend accept the finding of the independent National Audit Office that no health trust in the UK went without the PPE it needed, in contrast with many other countries? My constituents rightly expect transparency in procurement, but most would never want pursuing paperwork to be prioritised over providing proper protective equipment.

[Edward Argar]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The people of this country would expect the Government’s No. 1 priority in March, April and May of last year to have been, as it was, to move heaven and earth to get the PPE that was needed in a very challenging environment to the frontline. I think that what he was alluding to in the NAO report was paragraph 18 of the summary, which said:

“The NHS provider organisations we spoke to told us that, while they were concerned about the low stocks of PPE, they were always able to get what they needed in time.”

That is not necessarily an NAO conclusion, but it is a reflection of what it was told and cited in this report, so he is right to highlight it.

[Marion Fellows (Motherwell and Wishaw) (SNP) [V]]

The Ministerial Interests (Emergency Powers) Bill, introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Midlothian (Owen Thompson), which would require Ministers to answer questions in Parliament about any personal, political or financial connections they have to companies given government contracts, will now go forward to a Second Reading. I hope the Government will support it, as this Bill should help with the Government’s present court and publication difficulties. Does the Minister agree that it is crucial that we get greater scrutiny and have stringent regulations in order to increase transparency on the issuing of Government contracts and to ensure that the right people or companies are getting those contracts during these difficult times?

[Edward Argar]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady. I have highlighted just how important I consider transparency to be. This is the second time in two weeks, rightly, that I have been answering at the Dispatch Box, so I would argue that there is scrutiny there. On her final point about that private Member’s Bill, I know that the Government will look at that Bill as they would look at any private Member’s Bill, in the usual way.

[Kim Johnson (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab) [V]]

Nurses have seen us through this crisis and they have been putting their lives on the line every day, yet the Prime Minister has offered them only a derogatory 1% pay rise but handed out billions to private companies that did not provide what was needed and to standard—I remind Members of the 400,000 substandard gowns from Turkey. Does the Minister agree that it is a kick in the teeth that this Govt have chosen to waste £37 billion by giving it to Serco for a failed track and trace system while denying our incredible nurses the pay rise they deserve?

[Edward Argar]

What this Government have done, and did in the context of the issues under discussion in this specific question, is recognise the huge need for PPE during the pandemic last year and take every step they could to meet that need. They secured a large number of contracts, which delivered 8.8 billion pieces of PPE to date. I think that is called delivering.

[Peter Gibson (Darlington) (Con) [V]]

More than 70% of PPE is now made in the UK, whereas it was less than 1% before the pandemic. When that is coupled with the expansion of more than 22,000 ventilators, we see that this Government have done an incredible job. Does my hon. Friend agree that the petty point-scoring of the Labour party is not what we need at this time of national emergency?

[Edward Argar]

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 (Rhondda) (Lab)]

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]

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.

[Jacob Young (Redcar) (Con)]

Throughout the pandemic, the Government, the NHS and the armed forces have focused on saving as many lives as possible, while the Labour party has focused on this sort of hindsight and political games. Saving lives meant securing as much PPE as possible as fast as possible, so can my hon. Friend confirm that all those PPE contract notices that faced a short delay in publication are now in the public domain?

[Edward Argar]

I can confirm that the contract award notices for the contracts here, the PPE contracts, awarded directly by the Department are now in the public domain.

[Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP) [V]]

Will the Minister tell us: how much was paid out under the contracts in advance of delivery; how much has actually been clawed back for services or products not delivered; and how much are the Government still to pursue in repayments?

[Edward Argar]

As part of the answer to her question, I refer the hon. Lady to the answer that I gave to the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). In response to the rest of her question, the honest answer is that we are undertaking a stocktake and an audit. It is that which is required to assess whether any stockpiles are not fit for purpose or do not meet requirements, or to check what was and was not delivered and make sure that every order was fully fulfilled. We have been very clear that, as part of that audit, that stocktake, we will pursue with any who did not meet the requirements or did not supply the goods the recouping of that money for the public purse.

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con) [V]]

Last year, the shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster wrote:

“We need Government to strain every sinew and utilise untapped resources in UK manufacturing, to deliver essential equipment to frontline workers. This must be a national effort which leaves no stone unturned.”

Can my hon. Friend say that the Government have done what she wanted and have delivered for the people of this country?

[Edward Argar]

I would argue that that is exactly what the Government have done. The hon. Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves) and I do not always agree, but I agreed with her then and I agree with what she wrote then now.

[Mr Speaker]

I am now suspending the House for three minutes to enable the necessary arrangements to be made for the next business.