Covid-19: PPE Procurement 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
(2 years ago)
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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.