Covid-19: PPE Procurement
Debate between Neil O'Brien and Clive Efford(2 years ago)
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Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
I heard what the Minister said earlier about the process and how meticulously it was followed for every company that applied for contracts during covid. What is it about the individuals or companies that had associations with the Conservative party or Ministers that made them so adept at getting through the process?
Neil O'Brien
As I said, 90% of them did not get a contract, so it was not that they were being given some sort of guarantee of a contract. That scheme was a way of managing the contacts that were happening with Ministers. They were being directly contacted by MPs from across the House and all sides of it. There had to be a way of understanding what was happening with each of those bids, because otherwise it would have been completely overwhelmed. To reiterate: all the bids went through exactly the same process—not done by Ministers, but by civil servants—of checking the quality, the price and whether they could realistically deliver. There was no difference in the process that they went through.