Covid-19: Contracts and Public Inquiry

Lindsay Hoyle Excerpts

Wednesday 7th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Ian Blackford]

Last week, I raised an urgent question in this House on the misuse of covid funds—[Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Let us just calm down. Two of you cannot be standing at the same time. If the hon. Gentleman wants the Member to give way, he will give way. If the hon. Gentleman really felt that it was so bad, he could have made a point of order. The fact is that we need to calm it down. We need to get on with this debate, as it is important for all. People are watching it and we need to be able to hear all sides, and I am struggling at times. With so few Members here, it is amazing how much noise is being generated; I see Mr Shelbrooke is back in town. Carry on, Ian Blackford.

[Ian Blackford]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. These are important matters and we need to be able to deal with them respectfully.

Last week, I asked an urgent question in this House regarding the misuse of covid funds for political campaigning. The Secretary of State ordered the use of a £560,000 emergency covid contract to conduct constitutional campaigning on the Union. That was taxpayers’ funds, which were earmarked for the NHS to protect supplies of personal protective equipment but were instead used to order political polling. [Interruption.] I can hear an hon. Friend asking whether they can do that; no, it is not permissible to engage in such behaviour. We are talking about taxpayers’ funds that were earmarked for the NHS to order PPE but were instead used to order political polling.

At Prime Minister’s questions on the Wednesday prior to my urgent question, the Prime Minister told me that he was unaware of the contracts. The accusation of misusing covid contracts was not media speculation; nor was it a political accusation: it was a plain fact. It came directly from the official evidence published in the High Court judgment on the Good Law Project v. the Minister for the Cabinet Office, which revealed that the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster instructed—instructed—officials to commission research on

“attitudes to the UK Union”

using the emergency contract given to Public First for pandemic research. As I have stated, that is a fact admitted in a court of law, but in this very Chamber last week the Government sought to deny that any such spending took place and said that the Minister had no part to play in it. These are serious matters and we need honesty and transparency from the Government. Perhaps today the Minister on the Front Bench—the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, the hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds (Jo Churchill)—could put the record straight on the fact that it was admitted in court that that had happened.

We are dealing with a Government acting in a sleekit manner and in a covert way, using covid funds for research on attitudes to the Union without authority. For the UK Government to funnel funds earmarked for emergency covid spending into party political research is jaw-dropping and morally reprehensible. Can we imagine the reaction if the Scottish Government had used emergency covid funds to conduct polling on independence? There would have been justifiable outrage from Government Members.

In another court case, the failure to publish details of contracts within the required 30 days led the judge to rule that the then Health Secretary, the right hon. Member for West Suffolk (Matt Hancock), had acted unlawfully. It took the Government until last month to publish the details of 40 PPE contracts worth £4.2 billion, despite the contracts having been awarded a year before and despite the Government claiming months earlier that all PPE contracts had already been published. In documents seen by the BBC, Government lawyers admitted in February that 100 contracts for suppliers and services relating to covid-19, signed before October last year, had yet to be published. Yet three days earlier, the Prime Minister told MPs that the contracts were

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

Was this yet another example of the Prime Minister being unaware of the situation that his Government had found themselves in? The alternative is—and can only be—that the Prime Minister willingly misled the House and the public. There is no other conclusion that can be drawn—

[Hon. Members]

Withdraw!

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I went through this earlier with other Members. “Inadvertently”—we do not use the direct accusation that somebody misled the House, but “inadvertently” I will accept. We have to use the right language, which is the language that we expect, and I am sure that the leader of the SNP would not want to break with the good manners of this House.

[Ian Blackford]

Of course I would not wish to do so, Mr Speaker, but I am simply laying out the facts of the matter.

[Mr Speaker]

So we can use “inadvertently”.

[Ian Blackford]

I will be generous to colleagues and the Prime Minister and for the purposes of this place I will respectfully do so.

The court cases highlighted that the covid contracts were not published on time, and poor records left big unknowns, such as why some companies won multi-million-pound contracts and others did not. Clarity on the latter has been provided through the revelation that civil servants were requested to triage contract proposals into high-priority lanes. That means that proposals from a supplier recommended by Ministers, Government officials, or MPs and Members of the House of Lords were given preferential treatment. That was crucial to the success of those seeking procurement deals: a National Audit Office report found that up to July 2020, one in 10 suppliers that had been put in the high-priority lane were awarded a contract, while the figure was less than one in 100 for those outside that lane. It is not what you know, or what you can provide: it is who you know in Government. These priority lanes created a tale of friends and family fortunes.

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[Mr Speaker]

Order. Let us calm down. I think the right hon. Gentleman has been trying to catch your eye for quite a while, Mr Blackford. It is up to you who you wish to give way to, but if you did, it might save us all more pain in the future.

[Ian Blackford]

If the right hon. Gentleman tries, he might catch your eye later on in the debate, Mr Speaker. I think we have heard enough of him from a sedentary position. [Interruption.] Government Members can carry on—there might not be that many of them, but my goodness they make a hullabaloo as they try to shut down and shout down the representatives of Scotland who are here to stand up for our constituents. [Interruption.] Yeah, carry on, carry on.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Jo Churchill)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for the opportunity to speak in this Opposition day debate on covid-19 contracts and the public inquiry into the handling of the outbreak.

Possibly the only two sentences that I could agree with in what, unfortunately, was largely just smear—[Interruption.] Mr Blackford—[Interruption.] I am frightfully sorry. I would just gently say this to the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford): I sat quietly, with respect, listening to what you had to say. I would be really grateful for that same courtesy.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Let me just say that we do not call Members by their names; we use their constituency. We need to take the tension out and take the heat out. Everybody should quite rightly be listened to. The same that I expected for the leader of the SNP I certainly expect for the Minister.

[Jo Churchill]

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker.

I agree that we have seen, totally, the best of people—our frontline workers and our NHS workers. They have really stepped up. They need to know that we did everything we could in exceptional circumstances. I remember the weekend I went to Liverpool to meet the plane that flew back from Wuhan with those very first individuals who were carrying the virus. We knew nothing of it at the time, so how far have we come?

The other point on which I would agree with the right hon. Member is that very pithy sentence, “Those of us on these Benches know Scotland can do better.” As he will appreciate, covid-19 has presented this country with one of the most unprecedented challenges we have ever faced. It has been imperative for us to work together closely throughout this pandemic. In particular, the Government recognise the key role devolved Administrations have played in this, and I have been incredibly grateful for the meetings I have had with my counterparts not only on issues relating to the pandemic but on other issues—there was a meeting last week in which we spoke about how we might address the challenge of those going through the journey of cancer. We are very grateful for that.

It is thanks to that close collaboration and co-ordination that we have been able as a United Kingdom to achieve success in our vaccine roll-out programme. Over three quarters of adults in the UK have received at least one dose and well over half have received both doses. Our job was to protect the weakest and most vulnerable, and that goes for all of us.

Had we remained in the EU scheme, which has not performed as well as ours, we would not be here at this point, and I am proud of the work of the vaccines taskforce and proud of the leadership that Kate Bingham showed. I seem to remember these debates revolving around that at one time; I do not see anybody now denying and saying, “No, don’t give me a vaccine.” That work was led and driven by Kate Bingham and her team, who worked ceaselessly—longer days for longer weeks for longer months—to find our pathway out of this.