Not having time to scrutinise PPE contracts ‘source of frustration’ – Barclay
The former chief secretary to the Treasury was giving evidence to the UK Covid-19 Inquiry.
A former Conservative minister has said that not having enough time to scrutinise PPE contracts was a “source of frustration” in the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Steve Barclay, who was chief secretary to the Treasury from 2020 to 2021, answered questions about the huge increases in the department’s spending in the early months of the pandemic to secure contracts.
The UK Covid-19 Inquiry is spending several weeks looking into the Government’s procurement of personal protective equipment (PPE).
Mr Barclay told the inquiry that the “significant spend” came in the early months of the pandemic when there was “very little domestic supply” of PPE and “very little data”.
He said he was “under pressure to expedite orders” and that being told at short notice by Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) colleagues of contracts about to be signed and not having time to scrutinise them was a “source of frustration”.
He was asked about an email in which Lord Agnew, a Treasury minister at the time, said it was “ridiculous to ask me to approve a £1.25 billion programme in one day”.
Asked if this was an exceptional scenario, Mr Barclay said it “wasn’t as exceptional as it should be”.
Most of the contractual spend was incurred before June 2020, he said, at a time when there was uncertainty around demand. Demand modelling did not come until the autumn, he said.
He agreed that he and the Treasury were dependent on the DHSC, led at the time by Matt Hancock, to assess the global market rate and what could be considered good value.
“So was I comfortable as a chief secretary that the government was paying eight times, or at some point 14 times, the pre-pandemic price? Of course I wasn’t,” he told the inquiry.
But he said he did respect that “if the priority, which I agreed with, was to protect lives, then we needed to pay what the global market rate was at that time”.
As the inquiry looks into PPE suppliers, its chair has rejected a second attempt by Michelle Mone and her husband Doug Barrowman to be considered “core participants”.
The special status would have granted the Tory peer, 52, and Mr Barrowman, 59, access to documents, the ability to suggest questions through their lawyers, and get advance notice of the inquiry’s report.
The couple have faced scrutiny about the “VIP-lane” contracts granted to some suppliers during the coronavirus pandemic.
PPE Medpro, a consortium led by Mr Barrowman, was awarded government contracts worth more than £200 million to supply PPE, after Lady Mone recommended it to ministers.
Their first application for special access, which came 468 days after the deadline, was rejected at the end of February.
Baroness Heather Hallett, the inquiry’s chairwoman, warned that allowing their application to continue would “lead to further diversion and cause significant disruption to the timetable” of the hearings.
“The applications have caused a diversion of resources from the hearings at a critical juncture in proceedings,” Lady Hallett said in her decision to reject the application.
Lady Mone and Mr Barrowman claimed they are “the most high-profile corporate and natural persons to be associated with alleged PPE procurement fraud, and the only ones (along with their direct associates) to be both sued and/or criminally investigated by the state in respect of PPE supplies at the height of the pandemic”, according to the decision published by the inquiry.
Lady Hallett said they had acknowledged they were aware of the inquiry and there would be a module on PPE, but had not applied for core participant status during the window available to them.
Lady Mone and her husband stated that the chairwoman should have brought the inquiry’s “interest in PPE Medpro to their attention so that they could consider whether they wanted to apply for core participant status”.
But Lady Hallett insisted it was not necessary for her to contact individual companies, adding: “The inquiry conducts its work in public and rightly expects those with a potential interest in it to follow the information which it posts on its website, which is available to all.”
