The PPE scandal makes the case for an overhaul of standards in Westminster

Labour is looking to expose the dirty details about government procurement during the pandemic. The opposition has today tabled a motion to force a binding Commons vote on the release of documents relating to the controversial decision to award contracts worth more than £200m to PPE Medpro. The government has already admitted that the firm had an “underperforming” contract – something of an understatement when you consider the facts of the case. In May 2020, PPE Medpro received a contract worth almost £81m to supply 210 million face masks at 38.5p a unit – more than twice the price charged by other suppliers. The company received another government contract in June 2020 worth £122m to supply 25 million surgical gowns. The gowns were never used by the NHS after government officials rejected them following an inspection.

If that wasn’t enough to warrant a thorough investigation, PPE Medpro has become embroiled in a lobbying scandal. It was reported last month that Tory peer Michelle Mone and her family received £29m from PPE Medpro’s profits after she recommended the company to ministers. Mone is already under investigation by the House of Lords commissioner for standards over alleged links between her and the company. Her home in the Isle of Wight was raided in April as part of a National Crime Agency investigation.

On the broadcast round this morning, Angela Rayner declared that it was “really sick” that people had sought to get rich off the back of the pandemic and stressed that the allegations against Mone and PPE Medpro were not an isolated incident. The deputy Labour leader told Sky News that it was a “scandal of huge proportion” that the government had wasted so much money on unusable or overpriced personal protective equipment – almost £9bn according to government figures released earlier this year. “It looks like cronyism, that they’ve just been giving their mates these contracts without any due diligence,” Rayner argued.

The PPE Medpro controversy is just the latest evidence that government procurement during the pandemic failed to meet basic standards. The High Court ruled in January that the so-called ‘VIP lanes’ – which allowed MPs and officials to refer their contacts for government contracts – were unlawful. The court found that offers had been allocated to the VIP lane on a “flawed basis” and that “there is evidence that opportunities were treated as high priority even where there were no objectively justifiable grounds for expediting the offer”.

Labour’s motion today follows almost seamlessly on from the release of Gordon Brown’s long-awaited report on constitutional reform. Keir Starmer declared during his speech at the launch on Monday that Labour “will rebuild trust” in part through “reforming the centre of government” and “cleaning up sleaze” and by “replacing the unelected House of Lords with a new, smaller, democratically elected second chamber”. The PPE Medpro scandal shows the strength of the party’s argument for an overhaul of standards within Westminster.