The PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) scandal has seen billions of pounds of taxpayers money go unaccounted for.
In some cases contracts were awarded to unsuitable firms, after referral by Tory insiders. It was a two-way process with persons heading or linked to many of those firms donating large sums of money to the Tory party.
Much of this happened when Rishi Sunak was Chancellor and Boris Johnson PM.
It arguably amounts to nothing less than institutionalised corruption on a massive scale.
Standout case
One case involves Tory-appointed peer Michelle Mone and PPE Medro, the company she and her husband Douglas Barrowman are allegedly linked with.
The Guardian explained that Tory appointed peer Mone emailed fellow Tory peer Theodore Agnew, who was in charge of procurement during the pandemic, copying to Tory minister Michael Gove. Mone, it’s claimed, recommended PPE Medpro, which was subsequently awarded £200m.
The Guardian added:
PPE Medpro and its partners stood to make as much as £102.5m profit from its £203m contracts with the UK government.
It’s further claimed Barrowman was paid £70m by PPE Medpro and Mone and her adult children received £29m from PPE Medpro profits. The surgical gowns PPE Medro had procured were seemingly useless and never used by the NHS.
In June it was reported that the Department of Health and Social Care has launched legal proceedings against PPE Medro.
A long list
In September 2020 the Canary published a lengthy list of companies that benefited financially from the pandemic, compiled from a number of sources. Many of the firms it appears have links with the Tory party.
This list is updated:
- One case involves healthcare tycoon Frank Hester, who it’s claimed donated £5m to the Conservatives. The Department of Health & Social Care awarded his firm, Phoenix Partnership, £137m for an NHS digitisation project.
- Globus (Shetland), was awarded a £93m contract to supply respiratory face masks. It appears the firm donated more than £400,000 to the Conservative Party.
- Other firms, such as Public First, Faculty AI, and Topham Guerin, also had business links with the Conservative Party or the UK government.
- A contract worth £43.8m was awarded to TAEG Energy, a company shown as dormant by Companies House, for the supply of hand sanitiser.
- UK logistics company Uniserve, was awarded PPE contracts valued at £186m. Its owner was “listed as a speaker for the influential pro-Brexit lobby group Prosperity UK”.
- Initia Ventures Ltd possessed assets totalling £100 and was registered with Companies House as dormant. But it was awarded two PPE contracts valued at £49m.
- Kau Media Group “specialises in social media, search engine optimisation, online advertising and e-commerce” but was awarded a PPE contract for the supply of coveralls.
- Hanbury Strategy was awarded contracts worth £580,000 and £68,000 to research pandemic related public attitudes and behaviours. The company was co-founded by Vote Leave director Paul Stephenson, who apparently worked with Downing Street advisor Dominic Cummings.
- Aventis Solutions was awarded an £18.5m contract to supply face masks. Aventis is an employment agency whose net assets totalled £322.
- Clandeboye Agencies Limited specialises in nut and coffee products, chocolate, and confectionery. It’s based in the north of Ireland and was awarded a £108m contract to provide PPE.
- A £108m contract was awarded to Crisp Websites Limited, trading as PestFix, a firm that specialises in pest control. In an update, the government clarified that the PestFix award was actually £32m and covered isolation suits, though there were “a number of further contracts”.
- The cabinet office minister responsible for supporting coronavirus procurement, Lord Agnew, had shares worth around $120k in Faculty Science, now transferred into a ‘blind trust’. Faculty was awarded at least 13 PPE linked contracts, worth around £3m.
- Public First, headed by James Frayne and Rachel Wolf (who helped write the 2019 Tory manifesto) was given £956k for “advice on Covid-19 and reorganising the health and care system”.
- NHS Wales reportedly awarded Topwood “£300,000 worth of contracts”. It was revealed that Hancock had at least a 15% share in Topwood, a company owned by his sister Emily Gilruth. Companies House records showed that Topwood shares were divided between Hancock, his sister, and her husband.
- Serco was awarded a £45.75m to £90m contract to provide “Emergency Capacity Contact Centre Services for the Vulnerable People Support Service”. Serco’s CEO is Rupert Soames, the brother of former Tory MP Nicholas Soames.
- Tory peer and former investment banker Paul Deighton was the driving force behind the PPE awards and an AstraZeneca shareholder. He also had shares in the consulting firm Accenture, which was awarded a $5.6m contract to develop England’s contact tracing app.
- Several firms awarded PPE contracts were shown to have links to the fundamentalist Exclusive Brethren, which received support from Conservative MP Peter Bone and former Conservative MP Charlie Elphicke. They included: Unispace Global Health, Tower Supplies, Techniclean Supply Ltd, Blueleaf Ltd, Denka UK, Accora Ltd, ToffeIn Ltd, Oska Care Ltd, and Medco Solutions.
- Other large Covid-19 related contracts include: Medicine Box (awarded £40m), SG Recruitment UK Ltd (awarded £23.9m), and Randox £133m (Tory MP Owen Paterson is a paid consultant to the firm).
Single bid contracts
Some of the companies listed above were beneficiaries of single-bidder contracts awarded by the UK government.
In April 2021 Emma Guy of the Canary published a set of emails that proved the existence of the so-called VIP lane, which fast-tracked contracts referred by Tories.
Here is a list of such contracts, compiled from various sources:
In November 2021 the Good Law Project reported £1.6bn worth of contracts resulting directly from referrals.
MPs who were either referral sources or actual referrals included: Matt Hancock, the Office of the Duchy of Lancaster (then headed by Michael Gove), Gavin Williamson, Grant Shapps, Julian Lewis, Steve Brine, Andrew Percy, and Esther McVey.
The following peers were also named as either referral sources or actual referrals: baroness Mone, lord Agnew, lord Leigh, lord Chadlington, lord Deighton, and lord Feldman.
Even the rabidly pro-Conservative Daily Mail queried these “chumocracy'”cases:
Wastage of our money
There are also multiple examples of PPE and money wastage.
For instance, the Independent reported that the government paid Clipper Logistics £11m for PPE provision. Subsequently, Clipper was paid a further £4.5m to burn the PPE gloves, goggles, and gowns it procured as they were “ineffective”. Steve Parkin, who founded Clipper, is believed to have donated £730,000 to the Conservative Party.
Ayanda Capital specialised in “currency trading, offshore property, and private equity and trade financing”. It was awarded £252m for the supply of face masks, many of which it’s claimed are below standard. It’s claimed Board of trade advisor and Ayanda’s senior board adviser Andrew Mills arranged the contract.
The Tory government awarded contracts for a test and trace app to VMware and its subsidiary Go Pivotal for more than £4.8m and Zuhlke Engineering Ltd for more than £5m. As reported by the Canary, from the very beginning it was clear this particular app had serious flaws in its design and was eventually abandoned by health secretary Matt Hancock.
In another case, a £70m contract with Saiger LLC to supply over 10 million surgical gowns resulted in the items being withheld. Their use was suspended because of concerns about the way they were packaged. According to the BBC, the “contract had not requested double packaging, as used in sterile settings”.
The Guardian reported that former health secretary Matt Hancock allegedly recommended a firm run by his former neighbour and pub landlord Alex Bourne. The firm was subsequently subcontracted to provide test tubes in a deal worth £40m. However, questions were raised about the reliability of the product and it was alleged many test tubes were burned.
In 2020, it was reported that 400,000 medical gowns from Turkey had been impounded because of poor standards.
In June 2022, the Public Accounts Committee stated that PPE worth £4bn was unusable because it did not meet NHS standards.
Corruption on a massive scale?
The government has admitted it spent:
- £673m on PPE “not suitable for any use”
- £2.5bn on PPE “not suitable for use in the NHS”
- £4.7bn paying inflated pandemic prices for PPE we didn’t need to buy.
That’s taxpayers – our – money.
Earlier this year it was reported that the High Court found the government’s ‘VIP lane’ for PPE suppliers ‘unlawful’.
Clearly there are many questions about possible corruption on a massive scale.
Undoubtedly, the government prefers that the scandal be swept under the carpet. For we are living in times where corruption is the norm, institutionalised and rampant.
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