Thank you for contacting me about the Coronavirus response and PPE procurement.
Being able to procure PPE at speed has been critical to the Government’s response to Covid-19 and, at the outset of the coronavirus outbreak, it was made clear to all public authorities that they may need to buy in new services with extreme urgency. For the avoidance of doubt, this is not a change to the public procurement regulations; there are well-established procedures in the Public Contracts Regulations for handling extremely urgent procurements and they have been used by a variety of public authorities including the UK Government, and devolved administrations. Other countries followed similar urgent procurement processes.
The Secretary of State for Health has acknowledged that, unfortunately and despite the best intentions of those involved, not all the detail of every PPE contract awarded was published within the time frames required by law. While this is disappointing, I do appreciate the pressures that the Department for Health and Social Care was under last year. I am pleased to say that work is well underway to tackle the backlog in publication, with the Department for Health moving towards complete compliance again. I was also encouraged that the Good Law Project’s contention that the Government deliberately deprioritised compliance with transparency obligations was not accepted by the Court. I am pleased to say that work is well underway to tackle the backlog in publication.
Thank you again for taking the time to contact me.
Craig Whittaker MP
March 2021