Covid-19: Government’s Publication of Contracts Debate
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Jeff Smith
Main Page: Jeff Smith (Labour - Manchester, Withington)Department Debates - View all Jeff Smith's debates with the Department of Health and Social Care
Covid-19: Government’s Publication of Contracts
Jeff Smith Excerpts(3 years, 1 month ago)
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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.