My Lords, as we have heard, Clause 41 covers the very important issue of direct awards that may be awarded to protect life.
The Covid pandemic tested our current systems but, in one particular area, the Government have now admitted that they created a VIP lane, under which at least 50 contracts for test and trace were expedited. Many other contracts for PPE and other core Covid contracts also circumvented the usual public procurement routes in the VIP lane, as the noble Baronesses, Lady Bennett and Lady Hayman, mentioned. That is why my noble friends Lord Wallace and Lady Brinton have tabled Amendments 238 to 241. I have already explained that my noble friend Lord Wallace cannot be here, and my noble friend Lady Brinton is participating in the Chamber.
These amendments say that regardless of the emergency, the principles of transparency, integrity, fairness and non-discrimination must be at the heart of any contract process. These are the diagnostics of a good, well-managed company. If these are not pursued, it is very unlikely that quality and delivery will be good; and that is what we have found—delivery was poor. The VIP lane was a particularly egregious mechanism that the Government used to encourage contractors to come forward to supply goods at short notice, irrespective of those qualities that I have just listed. Billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money was used to provide contracts, including, as we have heard, to firms that had no experience of test and trace or the provision of PPE. This is not just a waste of money: one test and trace firm’s testing kits gave many thousands of erroneous false-negative results, which meant that people believed that they did not have Covid and went around the country infecting people accidentally, causing illness and possibly death. We do not know how many or how much.
PPE kit worth billions has already been and is being incinerated by the NHS, because it did not meet the required safety standards. It could not meet the quality standard, because it did not have the management controls and processes, nor the integrity, to meet it; it was not checked, because of the fast-track process. One common element is that it was parliamentarians—virtually all Conservatives—who introduced the companies that received this preferential treatment over and above existing, experienced suppliers and experts. There are many examples of this. Worse, the BMA reports that thousands of doctors ended up buying their own PPE, because they knew that the stuff that the Government were providing them with was substandard.
From our Front Benches and in private meetings with Ministers, despite repeated questioning, it was almost impossible to get answers about these appalling processes. Two years later, the truth is really beginning to emerge. Friends of Conservative parliamentarians were given unfair advantage in obtaining contracts, as we just heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman. That is bad enough, but the waste from those contracts is a stain on this Government’s procurement activities. It must never happen again.
Amendment 240 makes it plain that provision must not confer any preferential treatment on suppliers connected to or recommended by Members of the House of Commons or House of Lords. If the Minister resists this amendment, these Benches will also oppose that Clause 41 stands part of the Bill. As currently written, it does not prevent the procurement processes from this debacle happening again.
Can the Minister answer the following questions? Does she believe that Clause 41, in its current form, protects against abuse of a future emergency process similar to the VIP lane that this Government used, which has proven to be untransparent and to favour colleagues of parliamentarians? In other words, does Clause 41 stop this happening again? Does she recognise that now is the time to say that this must never happen again? And does she recognise that these amendments are a mechanism to ensure that we do not get a repeat of this?