Bad news for all pandemic profiteers…

By Gavin Hayman, Executive Director of Open Contracting Partnership

“Attention pandemic profiteers: the UK taxpayers want their £2.7 billion on wasted PPE back.”

That’s the idea behind Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ proposal to appoint a Covid Corruption Commissioner if Labour wins the next General Election.

Photo from Wikipedia Commons

The new role, proposed at this week’s Labour Party Conference, would investigate the billions in failed PPE contracts and try to get the government’s money back.

Needless to say, the UK Anti-Corruption Coalition would fully support this initiative. 

Everyone appreciates that the pandemic was an extraordinary period. It was an international emergency and supply chains were in chaos. But the UK seems to have had a uniquely problematic response with huge levels of waste and with its notorious “VIP Lane” which, don’t forget, was subsequently ruled as illegal. 

The VIP Lane seems to have institutionalised favouritism, even though there was no evidence that politicians anywhere were particularly well placed to decide who had stocks of good quality PPE and who didn’t. Close connections to a politician are normally a cause for more scrutiny of a contract, not less. 

Normal risk management and book-keeping were also suspect. In some cases, contracts were even agreed before companies were set-up. And huge quantities of PPE procured were substandard (some 1.9 billion items, equivalent to 6.2% of purchased volume).

As a result, last year, the Department of Health and Social Services told the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament said that as much as 5% of PPE expenditure may have involved fraud and that it is in dispute with PPE suppliers on 176 major contracts, with up to £2.7 billion of taxpayers’ money at risk.

To put that amount in context, it’s well over ten times the bill for fixing the recent school concrete crisis and then some. 

The Public Accounts Committee also noted that “progress in resolving these disputes has been slow with 86 of the 176 still at the very first stage of the commercial resolution process with an estimated 35% that will not be resolved by 2023”.

In the U.S., there is a Special Committee of Inspectors General called the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee, investigating fraud, waste and abuse of the US federal government’s Covid spending. This is exactly the kind of approach we need in the UK to speed things up, and the new Commissioner could fulfil the same role. There are good existing models out there on how such a Commissioner role (for example the Children’s Commissioner or Anti-Slavery Commissioner) can add value to the existing ecosystem of agencies and actors in the UK by asking difficult questions, chasing for a response as well as spotting gaps in government processes. 

Any government should want that vast sum of wasted money back. So let's see some real accountability for pandemic profiteering in the UK. Regardless of which party implements the proposal, let’s put that Covid Corruption Commissioner in post as soon as possible.

Gavin Hayman is the Executive Director of Open Contracting Partnership