Found: government-procurement-during-the-covid-19-pandemic/. 22 Sasse T, ‚The government must clean up its act on coronavirus

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many covid-related contracts (a) have and (b) have not been published on Contracts Finder as of 2 June 2023.

Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)

The Department is not aware of any Contracts Finder Notices for contracts awarded for the supply of goods and services in response to the COVID-19 pandemic which have not been published on Contracts Finder. Where a contract document is required and where this is available on our data systems this has been attached to the Notices. The Department has investigated and corrected a small number of cases where attachments that appeared to have been published were not visible on Contracts Finder.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 19 April 2023 to Question 176701 on Coronavirus: Contracts, how much funding was provided to each of the contracts that were awarded in response to the covid-19 pandemic.

Answered by Will Quince

A table is attached showing the individual current contract values for the majority of the 220 contracts reported as still active. On re-examining our data systems we have concluded that three of the contracts were in fact not active and should not have been included in the previous total of 220 contracts.

Individual values for 21 contracts with a total value of £7.8 billion cannot be provided as this is commercially confidential information. The great majority of these contracts by value are concerning the vaccines programme for which much information has been published in the form of Contract Award Notices on Contracts Finder, but the values have been excluded.

The remaining contracts within this group are classified as Official Sensitive due to the subject matters which they address.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many contracts relating to covid-19 are ongoing; and what the value is of those contracts.

Answered by Will Quince

A report from the Department’s central procurement and contracts database shows 220 contracts with a value of £9.7 billion awarded by the Department and the UK Health Security Agency in response to the COVID-19 pandemic are still active and ongoing as of 3 April 2023.

Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, with reference to the Government efficiency savings: technical note, 2021, published on 28 March 2022, what the (a) name of the supplier, (b) date the contract was awarded, (c) amount the Government paid to the supplier, (d) description of the contract and (e)) link to the contract on Contracts Finder was for each Department for Health and Social Care covid-19 response contracts that was renegotiated.

Answered by Jacob Rees-Mogg

The Government efficiency savings technical note sets out the government’s assessment of savings made by cross-cutting government functions in their work with government departments and other central government organisations.

The Government Internal Audit Agency was engaged to audit the £3.4 billion of 2020/21 efficiency savings. We do not intend to publish further details about the efficiency savings relating to the Department of Health & Social Care’s Covid response as there may be associated commercial implications.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government which members of the Government benefitted financially either (1) directly, or (2) indirectly, through a benefit to a close friend or family member, from the provision of goods and services in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Answered by Lord Kamall

The information requested is not held by the Department. Regulation 24 of the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 requires contracting authorities to take appropriate measures to effectively prevent, identify and remedy conflicts of interest arising in the conduct of procurement procedures. The Department has robust rules and processes in place to ensure that conflicts of interest do not occur, including declaration from suppliers, publication of Ministerial interests and robust Departmental guidance.

Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office, if he will ask the relevant authorities to undertake detailed audits of the 73 Government covid-19 contracts identified by Transparency International UK as containing corruption red flags.

Answered by Michael Ellis

Intensive collaboration with the private sector specifically on procurement has been, and continues to be, both necessary and essential for Government to properly manage and handle the Covid-19 crisis. During the most challenging periods, being able to procure at speed was critical in providing that response. Despite that, the Government has always made clear that all contracts, including all those entered into as part of the Government’s Covid-19 response, must achieve value for money for taxpayers and use sound commercial judgement. The details of all awards are published in line with Government transparency guidelines.

Proper due diligence is carried out for all government contracts and Government takes these checks extremely seriously. Government Departments, as individual contracting authorities, are responsible for ensuring that they have in place robust processes for spending public money fairly and achieving value for money for the taxpayer. This includes ensuring that appropriate levels of due diligence are undertaken on the supplier prior to award of contracts.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what was the administrative error that caused a week’s worth of meetings with companies seeking COVID-19 contracts to be excluded from Lord Bethell’s transparency returns; why this administrative error occurred; when the failure to include these meetings was discovered; and who informed the Department of Health and Social Care that the meetings had not been included.

Answered by Lord Bethell

These meetings were included in the relevant transparency return. However, the omission was caused by a formatting error during the merger of individual returns into a master document. This has now been corrected with the full list of meetings now available.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government how many people contacted the fast track ‘VIP lane’ for emergency procurement contracts to offer (1) personal protective equipment, and (2) COVID-19 testing equipment or services; and of this number, how many were awarded contracts.

Answered by Lord Bethell

The Department’s buying unit received offers of personal protective equipment (PPE) from approximately 16,000 companies and individuals commonly referred to as the ‘priority’ channel. Of the suppliers assessed through this channel, 47 of 493 obtained contracts.

There was no formal ‘priority’ channel to assess offers of testing kits or services.

“Dozens of companies with connections to a tiny fundamentalist Christian sect were awarded as much as £2.2billion in government coronavirus contracts” @thetimes They must be very grateful to Rishi Sunak.