Covid-19 Vaccine Roll-out Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department of Health and Social Care
Meg Hillier
Main Page: Meg Hillier (Labour (Co-op) - Hackney South and Shoreditch)Department Debates - View all Meg Hillier's debates with the Department of Health and Social Care
(4 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
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Matt Hancock
My hon. Friend’s constituents will be able to access the vaccine in Colchester from now, and some will be being called forward. Like many others, he rightly asks for the vaccination roll-out to reach Ipswich itself, and it will reach Ipswich itself just as soon as we can get that sorted. I have a lot of sympathy with what he said about two days feeling like a year!
Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a great day for medicine, science and the population, but in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Blaenau Gwent (Nick Smith), the Secretary of State was somewhat dismissive of an important National Audit Office report that raised serious concerns about the letting of contracts in Government—contracts being published late; missing paperwork; the establishment of a high-priority lane, with one in 10 of those applying via that route awarded contracts; and an overall lack of transparency. As the NAO says, the lack of documentation of key decisions, including
“why particular suppliers were chosen”,
is important. It is taxpayers’ money that is being spent. In relation to the vaccine roll-out, are private companies involved, and will the Secretary of State commit to being open and transparent and publishing the contracts and all the paperwork that goes with them?
Matt Hancock
Of course I will defend to the end the work that we did to get the PPE roll-out to which the hon. Lady refers. Of course we had priority contracts, because we wanted, when somebody had a good lead, to be able to see if we could make an arrangement as fast as possible, but that was all done through the proper processes, as the NAO report sets out. She asks—I have a lot of respect for the hon. Lady, but really—whether private companies will be involved in the vaccine roll-out. Try Pfizer or BioNTech, the people who came up with and are manufacturing this vaccine. Without them, we would not have a vaccine at all, and a bit of a thank you would do well from the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee.