Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps he has taken to ensure that there are no conflicts of interest in the awarding of contracts to develop a vaccine for covid-19.

All decisions on spend are made in line with expectations in Managing Public Money.

External experts are required to complete a conflict of interest declaration; these are then assessed on a case-by-case basis and where conflicts arise, those individuals are required to recuse themselves from the decision-making process.