Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, for what reasons Government contracts for the procurement of personal protective equipment (PPE) were awarded to companies with (a) no prior expertise in producing PPE and (b) limited financial capability; and what steps the Government has taken to ensure that it demonstrated appropriate competitive tendering for PPE.

Guidance on how contracting authorities should respond to COVID-19 was published on 18 March at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/procurement-policy-note-0120-responding-to-covid-19

Authorities are allowed to procure goods, services and works with extreme urgency in exceptional circumstances using regulation 32(2)(c) under the Public Contract Regulations 2015. These include a direct award due to extreme urgency or the absence of competition. Over 1,000 purchase orders have been raised with suppliers for COVID-19 related work, the majority through a direct award.

The Government issued a public call to action to support the increased requirements of personal protective equipment (PPE). The aim was to reach suppliers who had experience of supplying PPE and also those who had no prior experience but who had access to sources of PPE through their business contacts. To date this has resulted in 15,000 suppliers offering their help and support. All offers were prioritised based on volume, price, clinical acceptability and lead time – this is the time from an offer being accepted by the Department to the supplier delivering those items. Many suppliers with no previous experience of PPE repurposed their production lines and/or their supply routes in order to begin or increase production or the supply of PPE items. These were often established private businesses whose net asset position is only one factor in evaluating their offer.