Covid-19: Government’s Publication of Contracts Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department of Health and Social Care
Peter Grant
Main Page: Peter Grant (Scottish National Party - Glenrothes)Department Debates - View all Peter Grant's debates with the Department of Health and Social Care
Covid-19: Government’s Publication of Contracts
Peter Grant Excerpts(3 years, 9 months ago)
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Edward Argar
My hon. Friend makes an important point in his usual very forthright and clear way. The priority for this Government and for those working for them was to get the PPE needed in the quantities needed to be able to get it to the frontline to save lives. Transparency is important, of course it is. I recognise that and that is why we have worked since that time to get everything up to date in terms of transparency. But I make no apologies for the amazing effort that the Government and, most importantly, those working for them—the civil servants who did this work—put in to get the PPE in the quantities we needed.
Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP) [V]
Despite the Minister’s protestations and despite the huge amount of money that was spent, the fact is that for those working in the social care part of health and social care, the equipment did not get anywhere near the frontline anywhere like on time. I think the Minister is maybe glossing over the fact that, although supplies to the health service seemed to have been okay, supplies to the social care sector were desperately inadequate. A Public Accounts Committee report, endorsed by its members, a majority of whom are Government supporters, found that the Department had wasted hundreds of millions of pounds on equipment that was of poor quality and could not be used. We were also told by the Cabinet Office that it did not know how many contracts had essentially been approved after the work had started and how many contractors were only checked out for suitability after they had been given their contracts. Does the Minister not understand that all of that taken together creates a bad smell? Does he agree that the best way to get rid of that bad smell is to have everything published, including assessments of conflicts of interest and information that in normal circumstances might be termed or deemed to be commercially confidential? Does he not understand that confidence in public procurement by the British Government—
