Controversies regarding COVID-19 contracts in the United Kingdom
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom, the British government decided in March 2020 to rapidly place contracts and recruit a number of individuals.
Russell King, an NHS resilience manager, said; "the Cabinet Office had identified the availability and distribution of PPE [personal protective equipment] as a pinch point in a pandemic".
[14] According to Byline Times, the UK usually publishes an open call for bids to provide PPE in the Official Journal of the European Union.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), local NHS bodies and other government agencies directly approached firms to provide services, bypassing the EU's tendering process—in some cases without a "call for competition".
[21][22] According to a leaked document from the Good Law Project on 16 November 2021 that was published before its planned official release by the government, 47 companies were referred to this route.
[18] In an opinion piece, BBC economics correspondent Andrew Verity said there was an increased risk contracts would be seen to be "awarded not on merit or value for money but because of personal connections" when fast-tracking occurs.
[18] A landmark study revealed widespread corruption risks in UK government Covid contracts worth over £15 billion, accounting for nearly a third of pandemic-related spending.
The investigation, conducted by Transparency International UK, found systemic issues such as lack of competition, opaque accounting, and conflicts of interest in over 135 contracts.
[33] The Good Law Project and the Runnymede Trust brought a legal case that alleged Prime Minister Boris Johnson acted unlawfully in securing the two contracts, and had chosen the recipients because of their connections to the Conservative Party;[32] As of June 2021[update], the case was still ongoing, although previous action over Kate Bingham's non-competitive appointment as head of the vaccine taskforce was dropped.
In May 2020, O'Shaughnessy participated in a call with Bethell and Boston Consulting Group (BCG), a Portland client that received £21 million in contracts on the COVID-19 testing system.
[38] Other allegations of cronyism include: In April 2020, Ayanda Capital, a Mauritius-based investment firm with no prior public-health experience, received a £252 million contract to supply face masks.
The contract included an order for 50 million high-strength FFP2 medical masks that did not meet NHS standards because they had elastic ear loops instead of the required straps that tie behind the wearer's head.
[19] Andrew Mills, an adviser to the Board of Trade–a branch of Liz Truss's Department for International Trade–whose involvement was criticised by the Good Law Project, arranged the contract.
The Grand National, the biggest sporting event of the Jockey Club, whose executive board Harding and Paterson's late wife Rose sat on, is sponsored by Randox, who received £479 million in testing contracts.
[27] During the Owen Paterson lobbying scandal, it was reported in March 2020 Randox was awarded a £133 million contract from the DHSC to produce testing kits at a cost of £49 each[44] with no other firms being given the opportunity to bid for the work.
[46] According to Albon, technical assessments sometimes had to be repeated; the gowns' release to hospitals after failing the first inspection did not mean they were unsuitable or unsafe; saying: "In such cases HSE may have asked the supply chain to obtain further information, or to arrange for further testing, to verify the product.
In these cases, products that initially had insufficient or incorrect information provided may have been subsequently reassessed and agreed for supply when those gaps had been addressed.
"[46] The contract was challenged in the courts by the Good Law Project, which asked why the DHSC had agreed to pay 75 per cent in advance when the provider was "wholly unsuited" to deliver such a large and important order.
[52] Following a complaint by the Labour peer George Foulkes, the House of Lords commissioner for standards launched an investigation into the relationship between Mone and Medpro in January 2022.
[53] On 27 April 2022, Mone's homes in London and on the Isle of Man and associated business addresses were raided by the police, who have launched an investigation into potential fraud.
[55] In November 2022, The Guardian reported that an Isle of Man trust, of which Mone and her adult children are beneficiaries, had received £29 million originating from PPE Medpro via a series of offshore transactions involving Barrowman.
On 6 December 2022, Mone's spokesperson said she was taking a leave of absence from the House of Lords with immediate effect "in order to clear her name of the allegations that have been unjustly levelled against her.
