Government PPE Contracts

Debate between Neil O'Brien and Peter Grant

Tuesday 6th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Neil O’Brien]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am keen to reply to them. The hon. Gentleman said that only 3%—

[Peter Grant]

rose—

[Neil O’Brien]

I am literally responding to the hon. Gentleman. He talked about only 3% not being reusable and implied that some of the other things were only fit for servicing a car. To be clear, some of these things have a different clinical use. For example, the NHS tends to use and wants to use aprons on a roll when there is the choice, where we have a normal PPE market. What we do therefore is use the flat-pack ones that we had and donate them to care homes. Self-assembly visors are not preferred in the NHS because they take a bit of time to assemble, so we give them to dentists and the like.

We have heard two different uses of the words “writing off” in this debate, and it is important to be clear about the difference between these two things. Some people talk about “writing off” for things that are not usable, and only 3% of what was purchased is in that category. Then there is a different accounting use of “writing off”, which is something we have to do; we bought a load of PPE because we needed it in the middle of the pandemic and it was more expensive at that time—it was worth more then than it is now. That is the accounting meaning of “writing off”. Let us be clear about those two different uses.

Covid-19: PPE Procurement

Debate between Neil O'Brien and Peter Grant

Thursday 24th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Neil O'Brien]

Inevitably, a huge amount of the PPE that is produced in the world is produced by private companies. There is no world in which we could avoid the use of private companies to supply PPE.

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

My colleagues on the Public Accounts Committee are at an important evidence session this morning, otherwise I have no doubt that many more of them would be here. The report on PPE contracts, which was unanimously agreed by the Committee earlier this year, stated:

“At no point was consideration given to the extent of the profit margin that potential suppliers would be taking on payments for PPE. Neither was consideration of any potential conflicts between individuals making referrals through the VIP lane and the companies they were referring. We”—

the Public Accounts Committee, unanimously—

“are therefore unsurprised to see the reports of excessive profits and conflicts of interest on PPE contracts.”

Yet if today’s Guardian reports are correct, the extent of lobbying of Cabinet Ministers, one of whom is back in the Cabinet, by a senior Conservative politician went significantly further than the Public Accounts Committee was aware of at the time. Can the Minister confirm that the reports of additional lobbying in today’s Guardian are accurate and, if they are not accurate, can he come back with a statement to confirm that?

[Neil O’Brien]

I read the same article as the hon. Gentleman. I notice that it did not lead to a contract—the case that was mentioned in The Guardian—but more generally, absolutely, there are many lessons to learn about this process. However, we were having to pay, in some cases upfront, for PPE because, as part of the global scramble for PPE that I have described, if we were not prepared to go that extra mile, we would simply not have had the PPE and we would have had more nurses without the vital protective equipment that we all needed.