The government’s emergency procurement efforts in the first few months of the Covid-19 pandemic were plagued by a lack of transparency, contractual errors and potential conflicts of interests, according to a report by the National Audit Office.
In particular, the government’s “high-priority” procurement lane for personal protective equipment, where bids for contracts were ten times more likely to be successful, led to contracts being handed to suppliers with political connections without the standard transparency procedures being used. Overseen by the Department for Health, this scheme was an unusual departure from standard practice.
