Asked by: Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Labour - Slough)
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 10 July 2023 to Question 191948 on Coronavirus: Vaccination, whether his Department has made an assessment of the (a) value for money of, (b) reduction of contractual liabilities in and (c) lessons learned from its supply agreement with Valneva.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
The Department assessed the value for money of its supply agreement with Valneva at the time the agreement was terminated. As part of the termination of the contract a settlement was agreed which resulted in contract liabilities being reduced. No additional payments will be made by the Government to Valneva as part of the agreed settlement terms.
The Department and the UK Health Security Agency seek to learn lessons from all contracts awarded, including the Valneva supply agreement, and apply those lessons to future agreements. We are unable to provide specific details of the settlement agreement as these are commercially sensitive.
Asked by: Daisy Cooper (Liberal Democrat - St Albans)
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.
Asked by: Philip Davies (Conservative - Shipley)
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.
Asked by: Philip Davies (Conservative - Shipley)
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.
Asked by: John Spellar (Labour - Warley)
Question
To ask the hon. Member for Broxbourne, representing the Speaker's Committee for the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, pursuant to his answer of 24 October to Question 6697 on Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, what the average daily attendance of staff at IPSA London Office was in each of the last 12 months.
Answered by Charles Walker
Average attendance at the London office has been monitered carefully be IPSA and is calculated by working days in the calender month (and is only based on current office-based staffing numbers (66)). This does not, however, include a number of IPSA people based on home-base contracts who make regular journeys into the office, particularly when based a short distance from the London region. It should be noted at the outset too that the discovery and surge of the Omicron variant, which necessitated public health advice to work from home, will have had an impact on the data from at least last Autumn 2021 to Spring 2022. For nearly the entire time period requested in the question, a significant number of desks were unavailable for use in the IPSA office to maintain appropiate social distancing in the context of IPSA's office layout. As only 32 of the possible 81 desks were available for use from 201 to the end of September 2022, this further materially reduced capacity within and attendance at the office. Noting the desks available and the number of staff available on office-based contracts, the general figures are below:
Like many organisations in the publice sector, IPSA recognised many benefits for its people and performance in continuing with a hybrid approach to work despite a lifting of formal coronavirus restrictions and other government public health advice. IPSA functions, such as payroll accuracy and the speed of reimbursement, have not been adversely impacted by such a model, and IPSA has instead been able to build a more inclusive and diverse workforce based accross the U.K. by bringing forward plans to create a more representative, hybrid, and flexibe organisation to reflect the nations, regions and constituencies MPs serve. The geographical spread of IPSA staff, new hybrid approach to working, and importance of value for money for the public purse will be central considerations for IPSA when it explores the locations and size of any office premises (in London or elsewhere) which it may require in future to continue to discharge its statutory duties efficiently, cost-effectively, and transparently.
Asked by: Christopher Chope (Conservative - Christchurch)
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 14 March 2022 to Question 136496 on Coronavirus: Health Services, in what format his Department holds that information in relation to covid-19 vaccine damage.
Answered by Maggie Throup
During the pandemic, the financial framework moved to a system of nationally agreed block contracts with retrospective top-ups for reasonable COVID-19 related costs. While the costs collected in 2020/21 include elements of care delivered to patients, they do not contain an explicit price or cost for COVID-19 vaccination damage and therefore there is no specific related budget.
The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency monitors the safety of all vaccines. The Department also works with public health partners to review the effectiveness and impact of the COVID-19 vaccines to ensure the benefits continue to outweigh any potential side effects.
Asked by: Rachel Hopkins (Labour - Luton South)
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.
Asked by: Lord Hylton (Crossbench - Excepted Hereditary)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask Her Majesty's Government how many live-in carers working under a Health and Care Worker visa have been denied payments under the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme.
Answered by Baroness Penn - Minister on Leave (Parliamentary Under Secretary of State)
HM Revenue & Customs does not hold this information. The rules of the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme included employees on any type of employment contract, including full-time, part-time, agency, flexible or zero-hour contracts, providing they met the eligibility criteria. Individuals who employed someone, such as a live-in carer, could claim if they met the eligibility criteria.
Asked by: Dan Carden (Labour - Liverpool, Walton)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to his Answer of 10 January 2022 to Question 97125 on Coronavirus: Protective Clothing, how much of the total cost for items of personal protective equipment that were (a) not fit for use and (b) identified as excess stock was paid to companies which secured contracts via the high priority lane.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
The technical assurance process is ongoing, therefore the quantity of personal protective equipment currently deemed not fit for use is not yet available. The Department continues to work through resolution processes with the relevant companies.
1,177 million items were identified as having potential use in other settings, at a corresponding cost of £1,826 million, of which £931 million was paid to suppliers processed through the high priority lane. The Department estimates there are 3.8 billion items of excess stock. However, as excess stock is not ring-fenced as a separate category, the information on the costs for items secured through high priority lane contracts is not available.
Asked by: Rosena Allin-Khan (Labour - Tooting)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, how much funding has been allocated to Black-led charities and/or Black-led community organisations in each year from 2015 to 2021.
Answered by Nigel Huddleston - Financial Secretary (HM Treasury)
DCMS has not routinely collected this data across all of our programmes. Policy officials are currently reviewing how DCMS captures data on civil society organisations that are black-led, as well as other inclusivity and diversity metrics going forward.
DCMS’ Coronavirus Community Support Fund (CCSF) granted £200 million to small and medium sized charities) in 2020. The National Lottery Community Fund awarded 12% of all grants to organisations which benefited BAME people/groups and had leadership with relevant lived experience. The value of these contracts was £21,859.432.00.