The Conservative Party

The perfect fumble said:
This all stinks of cronyism and blatant criminality.

But it might no be as slam dunk as people think.

In normal times government procurement is a slow, time consuming, bureaucratic process. Specifications are drawn up, minimum number of bidders that must meet certain criteria are invited to bid, tendering takes place on a points basis, price, delivery, specs and so on and so forth.

But Covid was not normal times and the normal process was not fit for purpose, throw in the fact that everyone everywhere wanted PPE and they wanted it now and it became incumbent on ministers to act quickly on their own initiative.

And there in lies the rub.

Rules are put in place to keep us honest, when rules are discarded in extraordinary times it behoves ministers to act with probity and honesty of their own volition, clearly they did not.

But, as they were acting without rules because the rules had been discarded, can anyone make a case for the rules being broken?
Click to expand...


PPE was not available because the Government had failed to maintain the quantity of stocks recommended by the Cygnus & Cygnet reports

Much of the stock that we did have was out of date and unfit for use because the company appointed by the Government (a subsidiary of an American Postal Company with no experience in managing medical supplies) had failed to maintain the stock.

The contract to manage Health Supplies such as PPE has now been (despite Brexit) transferred to a French Company based just outside Paris.

There was virtually no HCID PPE in storage which led to the Government downgrading COVID (against WHO advice) to a less serious disease. (which ultimately led to the deaths of health workers ... but the Government hoping to avoid litigation).

Does that give you any clue as to why there was a mad scramble for PPE?
 
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