Covid-19: NAO Report on Government Procurement

Fleur Anderson Excerpts

Wednesday 9th December 2020 Westminster Hall

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Eagle, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Dan Carden) on securing this important debate. I will highlight the issue of scrubs, and ask the Minister to go back to the Department and sort out the national scrubs crisis, which is still carrying on and has not been addressed properly by the NAO report. However, that report is damning about procurement processes, and highlights a failure and mismanagement of the process for procurement contracts.

At the start of the crisis, there was a shortage of scrubs, and volunteers across the country jumped into action, including in the Minister’s own constituency, in Upminster. That is understandable: there was a short-term shortage of scrubs, which was met by amazing volunteers. However, why are those volunteers still there, having to fulfil contracts from hospitals that are saying they still have a shortage of scrubs all these months later? What is happening in the procurement process that means we are still facing this?

Putney Scrub Hub is an amazing place. The volunteers who run it are incredible, and their leader is an established leader in her field of producing scrub robes. She will not go back to work: she has taken time off until this scrubs crisis can be sorted out. She is fulfilling contracts from King’s College Hospital, Central Middlesex Hospital, the West London Kidney Patients Association, Royal Brompton Hospital and Northwick Park Hospital, as well as meeting the increasing need of vaccine clinics for scrubs. What is going on with procurement? In response to a written question, I was told that NHS Supply Chain is the main provider of scrubs, so I hope the Minister can go back and ask questions of NHS Supply Chain, to find out what is going wrong. The NHS Supply Chain hotel services tower has not put out any tenders for new contracts in the past 12 months, so who are these 14 suppliers who have the contracts? Why are they not stepping up to the plate? Why are hospital staff phoning up and finding out that there is a three-month delay in getting scrubs?

Back at the hospitals and clinics, there are shortages. This means that NHS staff have to go home, or are being told to bring in tracksuits, which is very damaging to morale. Will NHS Supply Chain meet with the leader of Putney Scrub Hub to talk about what the problems are with the procurement chains? Why are there billions of pounds’ worth of contracts on one side, yet our NHS staff do not have their scrubs? Will we enable the Putney Scrub Hub volunteers to at last put down their scissors and go home?