Oral Answers to Questions

Margaret Greenwood Excerpts

Thursday 17th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

What plans he has to review the value for money of the Government’s use of consultants during the covid-19 outbreak.

[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)]

What assessment he has made of the effectiveness of Government outsourcing during the covid-19 outbreak.

--- Later in debate ---

[Julia Lopez]

The National Audit Office set out a number of recommendations that we will be looking into, but the idea that we did not need to contract under emergency terms during the pandemic is inaccurate, and there are rules in place to allow us to do that. We have been slow to publish contracts because we experienced some problems, which I set out in the Westminster Hall debate last week, but we now have 100% of those contracts for the relevant bodies.

[Margaret Greenwood [V]]

The Good Law Project estimates that £1.6 billion-worth of contracts for covid-19 services have yet to be published, and details of contracts are consistently being published late. This is despite the fact that there is a legal requirement for those details to be published no more than 30 days after the contract is awarded. The Government are clearly failing in their duties. What is the Minister going to do to improve transparency in Government procurement?

[Julia Lopez]

We have now published in full all the contracts for personal protective equipment. There are some difficulties in doing that, which, as I say, I set out last week in the Westminster Hall debate. This week we have launched a Green Paper on public procurement, and we will be introducing a number of changes to our existing procurement regime when the transition period is over, which will improve the way we do things in future.