All 1 Debates between Nigel Mills and Julia Lopez

Tue 29th Jun 2021

Emergency Covid Contracts

Debate between Nigel Mills and Julia Lopez
Tuesday 29th June 2021

(3 years, 5 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Julia Lopez Portrait Julia Lopez
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My hon. Friend is absolutely right. As I have already said in this Chamber, tremendous work has been done with every corner of the UK and every devolved Administration, whether that is the vaccine programme, the furlough scheme or the rapid increase in testing capacity.

Nigel Mills Portrait Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con) [V]
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Has the Minister read the allegations made by Dominic Cummings that Ministers and officials would take procurement decisions and then subsequently a meeting would be arranged to pretend to retake them and go through the paperwork properly? Can she confirm that such behaviour would be completely unacceptable and that any investigation is taking place to determine whether these allegations are true?

Julia Lopez Portrait Julia Lopez
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I am afraid that I do not know in relation to the private meetings that Dominic Cummings had when he was in Government, but I know that he has set out concerns about our response to procurement in relation to getting the wrong answers after the event. I think he is concerned about whether we then create too much process around important decisions that need to be made in the heat of the moment, and he is right to set out those concerns. We need to make sure that our Green Paper on procurement makes us have better decision-making processes in times of crisis that can be properly scrutinised.