Medicines and Medical Devices Safety Independent Review

(asked on 23rd February 2021) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what criteria were used to award the contract for running the Patient Reference Group established following the publication of the Independent Medicines and Medical Devices Safety Review report First Do No Harm in July 2020.


Answered by
Nadine Dorries Portrait
Nadine Dorries
This question was answered on 1st March 2021

The Department awarded the contract through an open and competitive tender process. The criteria for award were as follows:

- Excellent communication skills, including a proven ability to work and communicate with a diverse range of stakeholders and maintain good working relationships;

- Excellent knowledge of the English healthcare system;

- Strong facilitation skills in order to empower the group to effectively feed in strategic views to Departmental stakeholders;

- Previous experience (minimum of five years) of working at the interface between patient engagement and high profile and high priority national policy relating to the health service;

- A clear understanding of the context surrounding the Review and the content of the report;

- Experience of working on highly sensitive issues, some of which are of a distressing and emotive in nature; and

- Awareness of any potential conflicts of interest that may arise in accepting a contract, and where necessary a plan for managing these.

The Most Economically Advantageous Tender criteria was also applied to award the contract with a quality/price weighting set at 80:20.

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