Covid-19: Government Transparency and Accountability

Fleur Anderson Excerpts

Thursday 22nd April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)]

I thank all right hon. and hon. Members from across the House who have taken part in this hugely important debate. I thank the Committee for its report, and its Chair, the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr Wragg), for the report and for securing today’s debate. I would like to declare that I have been involved in the data collection, as a volunteer in the Office for National Statistics covid survey, which comes to my house regularly—I can see the data being collected.

I stood at this Dispatch Box more than a month ago when the hon. Gentleman first introduced this report to the House, and my alarm at its contents has not subsided. So much has been asked of the British public as a result of the decisions that have been made and are being scrutinised in this report; there are huge implications to staying at home, closing businesses, and people not attending births, marriages, deaths and funerals. We need to know that we can trust these decisions. The Nolan principles of public life speak of “objectivity”, “accountability”, “openness”, “honesty” and “leadership” as being absolutely core to public office and good governance. This report brings the Government’s stewardship of every one of those principles into serious question. On both sides of this House, we should be deeply concerned.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol South (Karin Smyth), with her expertise as a former local emergency planner, talked correctly about preparedness, asking whether we are prepared for what is to come with covid and for future emergencies. She asked what can we learn from the decision making and talked about the ideological barriers to good decision making that have been displayed. My hon. Friend the Member for Luton South (Rachel Hopkins) talked about the impact of the lack of transparency. It is still having an impact on decisions now, for example, in respect of the data behind the traffic lights for travel restrictions. We still need to see data—it is still not good enough.

I wish to focus on three core themes: accountability, clear decision making and transparency. On accountability, I share the Committee’s indignation that the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster did not appear before the Committee during its inquiry. What has he got to hide? Has he decided that parliamentary scrutiny, the bedrock of our democracy, is just not for him? As the report says, this was “contemptuous of Parliament”. Does the Minister know why the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster did not appear?

Continuing on the theme of accountability and openness of information, one area the report does not highlight but which is very relevant is the issue of private contractors. How can Parliament scrutinise the Government’s pandemic response when so many essential components of the response have been given to unaccountable private firms? We recently learnt that as well as the Government paying Deloitte £323 million for its role in the test and trace system, it is even being paid to draft Ministers’ parliamentary answers, which is ludicrous. Paragraph 96 of the report states:

“Lines of accountability must be clear”.

I absolutely agree. But it would seem at the moment that if we need answers we would be better off contacting the chief executive officer of a large consultancy firm than the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.

That brings me to the second key theme of the report, which is how decisions are made. I wholeheartedly agree with the report’s analysis that it has been very unclear who is responsible for ensuring that decisions are underpinned by data, especially when so much is at stake; that is absolutely right. There has been buck passing between Departments, which is totally unacceptable. One wonders if this could have been avoided and we could have found out more if the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster had bothered to turn up to the Committee in the first place. I am also pleased that the Committee highlighted the issue of local contact-tracing data, which has been raised by Members in this debate. This is a crucial point and it is absolutely correct.

Vital information, which would have helped local leaders to respond quickly to outbreaks, simply did not come quickly enough. Last month, I met local councillors and local authority contact tracers up and down the country and they all reported feeling completely bypassed by the Government. They had the capacity, the tools and the local knowledge to run a highly effective contact tracing system, and many went on to do so, but they were not given the data that they needed fast enough, despite pressing for it. I heard stories of people having to wait five days or longer for the information that was needed immediately.

It is very clear that an ideological reluctance to work with local authorities drives that decision making. Perhaps the Minister could tell me what the reasons were behind the Government’s unwillingness to share data with local authorities and local contacts. Does she agree with the report and with my Opposition colleagues that that seriously hindered the ability of local government and local authorities to control the virus at a vital time? Contact tracing is likely to play an important role for as long as we have new cases of covid-19 around the country, so this is important to know now and for the future. It is integral to breaking the chains of transmission. Labour has long been asking the Government to put contact tracing in England into the hands of local councils and trusted local public health teams who know their own communities better than anyone, rather than into the hands of more and more unaccountable firms. It is not too late to do this.

Finally, let me turn to transparency. Again, I am so glad that the Committee highlighted this crucial issue. A lack of transparency has plagued the Government’s response to the pandemic from the off. In particular, I share the Committee’s concerns about the obfuscation over the data that we saw during the tier system. This report shows that there were no data thresholds aligned to the indicators for tiering decisions. There simply cannot be a repeat of the shambolic and unfair chaos and confusion that we saw towards the end of last year, as we now move towards the end of the road map and beyond.

The Government’s aversion to transparency extends beyond lockdown data, however. Not mentioned in the Committee’s report are procurement and the information available on outsourced Government contracts, which is also very relevant. At the latest count, nearly 100 covid contracts awarded to private suppliers last year have still not been published. We simply have no idea how much the contracts were worth, who they were awarded to, and what they were for. This is extremely important information that should be in the public domain to build public trust.

The recent twist in this worrying tale came recently when the High Court found that the Government had acted unlawfully when it came to transparency in contract publishing. In fact, only this week the Good Law Project has uncovered that a £100 million personal protective equipment contract was brokered by a Conservative party donor and good friend of the Government. That information entered the public domain only thanks to an administrative error, which appears to be the only way to get reliable information from the Government these days.

Then we have the murky subcontracting of the Government’s contractors. Let us take Test and Trace for an example. My hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster highlighted in the House last October the fact that Serco had subcontracted its work on contact tracing to 29 other companies. The Government have refused to give us the names of these businesses; we simply do not have the transparency that we need. This information about data and taxpayers’ money should not be hidden from the public.

In closing, allow me to offer my sympathy to the Paymaster General. She certainly has a lot of questions to answer this afternoon. This report says that it is vital that lessons are learned and that changes are made. This is a Government who refuse to learn and refuse to change. When the chips were down and the stakes could not be higher, this report has shown that many, many times the Government threw openness, transparency and best use of data out of the window, which has undermined public trust in Government decision making.

The Committee has recently recommended a public inquiry and we on the Opposition Benches are also calling for that. It needs to happen urgently so that we can rebuild that essential trust among the public, and it cannot wait until the next Parliament. I hope that when it does arrive, it will address the many questions posed by this report that remain unanswered. The Government simply cannot run from scrutiny forever.