Gove lying about extent of vetting for PPE deals: Labour

(File photo) Michael Gove

Michael Gove has been accused of falsely claiming all personal protective equipment (PPE) contracts for the NHS went through eight steps of vetting, as it emerged this did not happen with a deal for millions of unusable face masks linked to a Tory adviser. Angela Rayner, Labour’s deputy leader, said Gove and other ministers were “apparently lying to the public and lying to parliament” by claiming that “every single procurement decision went through an eight-stage process”. She uncovered the fact that the much-vaunted eight-step process was not undertaken in the case of Ayanda Capital, which was awarded £252mn of deals for PPE supplies in spring 2020. Face masks provided by Ayanda were ultimately unusable because the department of health and social care had specified masks with ear loops, despite the NHS requiring masks that looped over the head. The process was also not followed in the case of PestFix, a pest control supplies company with net assets of £18,000 that was awarded a contract to supply PPE worth £350mn to the NHS, some of which also did not meet the health service’s technical standards. In answer to a parliamentary question, the Health Minister Jo Churchill said: “The eight-stage process to assess and approve offers of support to supply (PPE) evolved over a short period of time at the end of April 2020 to formalise the checks quickly put in place by the cross-government PPE procurement cell in March 2020. “Contracts with Ayanda Capital and PestFix pre-dated the formalised eight-stage assurance process but these suppliers were evaluated by officials on financial standing, technical compliance and ability to perform the contract. “The contracts are awarded by the appropriate departmental accounting officer in line with our terms and conditions.” Internal documents released as part of a judicial review case revealed in May that Ayanda, a “family office” finance house in London, was awarded two PPE contracts for a total of £252mn after being referred to the VIP lane for assessing deals because its representative, Andrew Mills, was an adviser to Liz Truss, the trade secretary. Officials pushed for the contracts to be processed as quickly as possible, with one marking e-mails “urgen VIP case” and “very urgent VIP escalation”, saying that if the deal did not happen: “Andrew will escalate as high as he can possibly go!”