Covid-19: Contracts and Mass Testing Programme

Lord Scriven Excerpts

Wednesday 4th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

The noble Baroness is right that transparency is key. I take those principles extremely seriously, and that is why we are publishing the contracts. I encourage anyone who is interested in looking at them to look at my Twitter feed, where I published a link to the Contracts Finder service yesterday. I reassure her that, although some connections were made through networks, absolutely every contract had exactly the same technical assurance, exactly the same contract negotiation and exactly the same procurement scrutiny. Those were done by civil servants, and value for money for the taxpayer and the people was guaranteed by that process.

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister seems to say that there is nothing to see here, whereas some of us think that there is a whiff of uncertainty and of some things being not quite right. Therefore, will he agree to appoint an independent forensic auditor to carry out an independent report that can be published publicly to show exactly what has happened with PPE procurement?

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, I do not want to give the impression that absolutely everything is perfect. Those were desperate days and we had to do extraordinary things to protect our healthcare staff. I remind noble Lords that other countries were flying in their representatives with bags of cash on private jets in order to seal contracts and some of our supplies were literally taken from under our noses on the runway at Hong Kong airport. They were extremely difficult times and I do not pretend for a moment that everything was absolutely perfect, but I reassure noble Lords that the right procedures were put in place by officials, and I reassure the noble Lord that these figures are currently being validated with the National Audit Office.