Labour has set out the questions the Health Secretary must answer to restore public confidence, after he was found to have acted unlawfully over the award of contracts.
Writing to Matt Hancock following Friday’s court ruling, Shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Rachel Reeves MP asks:
Will you commit to publishing all outstanding contracts, winding down emergency procurement powers and reintroducing tendering, in light of the ruling and the huge amount of waste and cronyism marring Covid procurement?
When do you expect the government will find the billions of pounds worth of PPE, which you recently commissioned outside consultants to track down?
Almost £2 billion worth of contracts have gone to Conservative friends and donors since the start of the pandemic, according to Labour’s analysis.
The party has asked the government about the VIP fast lane on seven occasions, without answers.
The National Audit Office revealed in November that companies were 10 times more likely to be awarded work if they were referred by ministers and MPs onto the government’s VIP high priority lane.
Shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Rachel Reeves MP said:
“Matt Hancock cannot simply brush off this court ruling. He must commit to cleaning up the cronyism and waste that has marred government contracting during the pandemic.
“We have tried to get answers about who is getting VIP treatment but the Conservatives are refusing to tell us. Now we know the Health Secretary acted unlawfully, these are no longer questions he can ignore.
“The government must publish the outstanding contracts and details of the VIP lane as a first step to restoring public confidence.”
However speaking on TV this morning Matt Hancock says his team did the “right thing” and was “totally focused on saving lives”.
He says there was a “technical issue” in that “we were just over a fortnight late on average with the publication of these things”.
“We were very, very tight on PPE and… thanks to the incredible work of my team we didn’t have a national shortage,” he says.
