One-fifth of UK pandemic PPE contracts red flagged for ‘corruption’ risks
A hard hitting report by the global anti-corruption organisation, Transparency International, has highlighted concerns over public procurement and transparency practices of the United Kingdom government in selecting suppliers and awarding contracts, many without competition, worth billions of pounds for Personal Protective Equipment at the height of the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic.
A review of nearly 1,000 contracts worth £18 billion issued between February and November 2020 by the United Kingdom chapter of Transparency International identified £3.7 billion, approximately one-fifth, as having the potential to involve fraud or cronyism.
The report highlights that some 24 PPE contracts worth £1.6 billion were awarded to those with known connections to the ruling Conservative Party, whilst three contracts worth £536 million went to politically connected companies for COVID-19 testing related services.
The report also said that 14 companies incorporated in 2020 received contracts worth more than £620 million. Of these, 13 contracts totalling £255 million went to ten companies less than 60 days old.
Transparency International is particularly critical of the UK Government’s failure to publish contract information promptly and, in any case, within 30 days as public procurement regulations demand, for which the Department of Health & Social Care was judicially reviewed by public interest lawyers, the Good Law Project.
Its research identifies that £7.4 billion of Covid-19 contracts awarded between February and November were reported more than 100 days after they had been signed and draws a highly unfavourable comparison between the UK’s performance and that of the Ukraine which took less than a day to publish information on its 103,000 Covid-19 contracts during the same period.
Speaking to The Times newspaper, Daniel Bruce, chief executive of Transparency International, said that the government’s approach to procurement during the period had “dented public confidence at a time when the trust of its citizens is most needed”.
To mitigate what Transparency International see as the shortfalls in the UK’s obligations around transparency and ensuring value for public money, the organisation makes ten recommendations:
A resumption of competitive public procurement as a default;
Truncated procurement processes should only be used with parliamentary oversight under a new legal basis;
The 73 ‘high risk’ PPE contracts identified by Transparency International in its research should be subjected to detailed independent audit and scrutiny;
That the UK Government should work to ensure there is a robust stockpile and supply chain of PPE to deal with future pandemic crises and provide a progress report
Public bodies should baseline bribery and corruption risk assessments into future crisis procurement practices;
The Minister for the Cabinet Office should make a statement to Parliament outlining where compliance failures have occurred and how future occurrences will be prevented;
That the integrity and utility of public procurement data be strengthened;
That forthcoming reforms to public procurement be utilised as an opportunity to improve the quality and consistency of data;
Responsibility for overseeing and enforcing the Ministerial Code should be moved to an office independent of government and accountable only to Parliament; and,
That the UK Government bring forward legislation for a new statutory offence of corruption in public office at the earliest possible opportunity
“Track and Trace - Identifying Corruption Risks in UK Public Procurement for the Covid-19 pandemic” can be obtained from Transparency International by following this link.
