Watch the full video and transcript of my contributions as I call out Government corruption and cronyism surrounding the PPE procurement contracts.
I have a few points for the Minister of State, Department of Health and Social Care, the hon. Member for Colchester (Will Quince), who is no longer in his place. The National Audit Office did not have all the paperwork it needed to give a full and correct report. Therefore, when the Minister kept quoting the National Audit Office saying that due diligence was done on all companies, that is not correct. Also, the NHS published weekly consumption data during the pandemic, so the question is: how on earth did we come to buy five times more PPE than we actually needed? It makes no sense. There is a lot of evidence and paperwork on the Good Law Project website, just for the Minister’s reference.
The coronavirus pandemic has been a nightmare for everyone. It was a time of national pain and loss, and for some it was unspeakable. People lost loved ones, as I did, and it was also financially damaging for the country. It is absolutely shocking and unforgivable that some people saw this crisis as an opportunity to seriously line their own pockets, making money out of the misery we all went through. Let us be clear: this money is not free money. This money comes from working people through taxation, and the Government have been pickpocketing the working class to fund the lifestyle of the rich.
We still do not know the true extent of the misuse of public money, and that is why this motion is important. Even though I and many others have been asking questions for three years, what comes back from the Government is really quite sparse. We are having to piece together the information, and that is not good enough from a Government. They need to be transparent and honest, and the public deserve to know who was given public funds, how many had links to the Conservatives and what they were paid for. I often ask, “What were they paid for? What kind of PPE? How many, and how many did we receive?” The Minister never comes back with that information, so if the Minister has the facts and figures, broken down for each company, I would appreciate if he put that in the Library. According to the Minister last week, some companies were paid for PPE even though we had enough PPE in stock. I said, “Was that deliberate?” and he said yes. I think that is really quite strange—if we have enough PPE, why are you giving people more PPE?
The hon. Member claims that we bought five times too much PPE. This is not the case. We did have 20% excess capacity against a worst-case scenario that, thankfully, did not materialise. But just to be clear to her, it is not the case, as she keeps saying, that we bought five times too much PPE. That is simply not the case.
I thank the Minister for that intervention. So can he just clarify: if the NHS was given weekly stats on how much PPE was needed, how come there is so much PPE in storage, which is costing £750,000 a day to store? Does the Minister want to come back? Oh, the Minister of State has walked in at the right time.
The Minister of State did actually give the House some updated figures on that point. It is not the £750,000 figure the hon. Member just quoted. On this point, it is not the case that we bought five times too much PPE. She keeps saying that. It is not the case.
I suppose the facts will reveal themselves when the Minister shows us all the paperwork, leaves it in the Library and then we can go through the facts, the stats and the figures together. I look forward to that. We heard earlier today—[Interruption.] The Ministers are going through some figures now. I really think that, to resolve all of this, and to not even have this debate and conversation, they should put all the paperwork in the Library, we can all go through it together and that is what is needed.
My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech and she has spoken with incredible experience and heart on this subject throughout the last few years. Does she agree it is particularly galling that we are seeing the former Health Secretary write a book, the “Pandemic Diaries”, yet we are not able to scrutinise the facts and evidence of the decisions that were taken not just about the public’s money but about public safety?
My hon. Friend makes an extremely valid point. I spoke in Committee this morning. I am not going to read the book but I think we have to scrutinise it and cross-check the information that the Minister gave in Committee against what is in the book. The new Ministers who have come into post should be a little more humble, because what has happened is shocking. The cronyism and the corruption that has happened in the Government in plain sight is truly shocking. The Government are now spending £10 million burning PPE. It is like they are burning the evidence—we wonder why. [Interruption.] Sorry, the Minister said that I have just criticised the Minister for storing PPE. He is right. I would not want the Minister to spend nearly £1 million every day storing PPE. I also do not want him to burn PPE. He should be using the PPE—give it to people who are travelling on the tube. We are having a flu epidemic and it will help to resolve that, so don’t heckle me when this is your responsibility—[Interruption.] I mean the Minister. Sorry, Madam Deputy Speaker. The Government are incompetent as well as corrupt and it is not just cronyism. The situation is so ridiculous—[Interruption.] Am I not allowed to call it what it is, Madam Deputy Speaker? It smells like corruption to me.
Order. It is perfectly in order for the hon. Lady to say “incompetent”, but I would be grateful if she would find another form of words, rather than saying “corrupt”.
This is so ridiculous, Madam Deputy Speaker. When the Netflix series comes out, nobody is going to believe it is a true story. I know we are not supposed to speak about the Conservative peer too
much, but we learn today that they are taking leave of absence from the Lords. I am not saying this in jest, but I hope she is not on her yacht trying to do a runner because a lot of money has gone missing. In a previous Minister’s own words, he was being “bullied” into giving this contract—[Interruption.] No, I don’t feel sorry for him, but he was being bullied. Two Ministers were being bullied, so it is important that we investigate the VIP lane.
As I said earlier, the National Audit Office said that companies were put there by mistake and were still given millions of pounds. Surely that shows us that due diligence was not done; the company was there by mistake. How did it get all that money? When the Minister gets to his feet, could he tell the House how many of these companies existed before the pandemic? If he cannot, of course, we look forward to that information being available in the Library or when this motion passes today, which I hope it does.
For the avoidance of any doubt, we all know that the VIP lane was a bit dodgy—that is just a fact and on record—but this has all come to light not because Parliament managed to force the Government to reveal everything that happened, but because a bank reported unusual activity and dropped a certain person and her husband in fear of reputational damage. That is what has brought this particular scandal to light and the National Crime Agency has now investigated.
As others have said, this is just the tip of a very large iceberg. The Serious Fraud office is also investigating contracts won by another company, Pharmaceuticals Direct Ltd, which paid a whopping £20 million fee to a middleman, Surbjit Shergill, who worked for Samir Jassal. Together, they had a hotline to the then Prime Minister’s special adviser, Munira Mirza. We also know—we have seen the emails—that they were helped by the right hon. Members for West Suffolk (Matt Hancock) and for Witham (Priti Patel).
If a company has to go through due diligence and believes that it is participating in a proper process, why would it agree to pay a politically connected middleman £20 million? That does not make any sense. If everybody is treated the same, there would be no need to pay somebody £20 million to move up the list. As you said, Madam Deputy Speaker, I cannot say the word “corruption” —I am trying to think of other words; hopefully more will come to me and I will use them—but it feels very much like cash for covid contracts. What happened to that money is a mystery. The Serious Fraud Office continues to investigate the case 18 months after it was referred.
I could speak about so many more cases. For those who are interested, there is a thread on my Twitter account about some of the other companies where there are huge questions to be answered. The Government need to open up their books and ensure that there is proper scrutiny. Yes, of course we accept that mistakes were made and that some of them were unavoidable, but the Department of Health and Social Care did not do the fraud checks that it was supposed to do; we had to push it, and that did not come out until a whole year later. There has been negligence, but there has also been something a little more sinister happening in Government.
Those people who stole money from the public purse during a national crisis should be ashamed. They should not say, “I was doing it for the country” as they are not
when they are pocketing millions of pounds. It is not patriotic; it is a word that you are not happy with me using, Madam Deputy Speaker. Those people took the money unlawfully, really—they were helped by Government Ministers—and they will have had plenty of interest payments from their ill-gotten gains. Now is the time, during the cost of living crisis, to give that money back. That includes the donations given to the Tory party by those people who had a bung from the covid crisis—they need to come back into the public purse.