Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what is the (a) number and (b) value of contracts for personal protective equipment for which his Department (i) has brought and (ii) plans to bring legal action against the supplier due to quality issues; and how many of those suppliers have been excluded from taking part in public procurement.

The Department has continued to place quarterly update reports in the libraries of both Houses. These reports include information from the Department’s Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) Contracts Dissolution Team and provide an update on progress made by the team, with the most recent being placed on 16 March 2023. The March update reported that the Department had reduced the number of contested PPE contracts from 176 to 60, with an associated value at risk reduced from £2.6 billion to £1.6 billion.

The Department has brought one legal action against one supplier for a contract to the value of £122 million. The other contested contracts are currently under investigation and may or may not result in legal proceedings. Procurement exclusion decisions are made on a case-by-case basis against the criteria set out in Regulation 57 of the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 and are taken by contracting authorities when bidders have applied to participate in a procurement exercise.

The supplier against which legal action has been taken by the Department has not participated in any subsequent procurement exercises undertaken by the Department, and therefore no exclusion has been exercised.