Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office, with reference to the November 2020 NAO report on Government procurement during the covid-19 outbreak, if he will open the fast track approval process to all potential contracts and suppliers to ensure equal treatment for all.

Being able to procure at speed has been critical in providing the Government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

We welcome the NAO report which recognises that the government ‘needed to procure with extreme urgency’ and ‘secured unprecedented volumes of essential supplies necessary to protect front-line workers’.

All contracts, including those designed to tackle coronavirus issues, must continue to achieve value for money for taxpayers, use good commercial judgement and the details of any awards made should be published as soon as possible in line with Government transparency guidelines.

Robust processes are in place for the award of government contracts. PPE offers were assessed using the same eight step process, including quality checks, price controls and other due diligence, no matter where the original referral came from. This eight step process has been published in the NAO’s report. For further details please see the statement on gov.uk.

We are committed to transparency in public procurement. Details of central government contracts above £10,000 are published on Contracts Finder. We regret that some details have not been uploaded in a timely fashion. All will be published as soon as possible and significant information is already available online.

The forthcoming Green Paper on transforming the UK’s public procurement regulations will strengthen our longstanding and essential policies that are fundamental to public procurement including transparency, ensuring value for money and fair treatment of suppliers. As part of this, we will propose legislating to reinforce that contracting authorities would need to publish basic disclosure information, including the basis of award decisions.

We have always accepted that there are lessons to be learned from how we responded to this unprecedented global pandemic and the government is fully committed to doing so. We will address the NAO report’s recommendations in due course. As I stated in my answer on 12 November, we are engaged in both internal and external audit to review how our procurements during this period have been conducted.

The service to offer coronavirus (COVID-19) support has closed. Information for businesses seeking to offer coronavirus support is available at https://www.gov.uk/coronavirus-support-from-business