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An anti-corruption charity says it has identified significant concerns in contracts worth over £15.3bn awarded by the Conservative government during the Covid pandemic, equivalent to one in every £3 spent.
Transparency International UK found 135 “high-risk” contracts with at least three red flags – warning signs of a risk of corruption.
Twenty-eight contracts worth £4.1bn went to firms with known political connections, while 51 worth £4bn went through a “VIP lane” for companies recommended by MPs and peers, a practice the High Court ruled was unlawful.
A Conservative spokesperson said: “Government policy was in no way influenced by the donations the party received – they are entirely separate.”
Transparency International UK analysed 5,000 contracts for red flags.
The charity said its analysis also indicated that almost two thirds of high-value contracts to supply items such as masks and protective medical equipment during the pandemic, adding up to a total of £30.7bn, were awarded without any competition.
A further eight contracts worth a total of £500m went to suppliers no more than 100 days old – another red flag for corruption.
Normal safeguards designed to protect the process of bidding for government contracts from corruption were suspended during the pandemic.
The government, led by Boris Johnson, justified this at the time by stressing the need to short-cut the bidding process to accelerate the supply of much-needed items such as personal protective equipment (PPE).
But Transparency International UK, a core participant in the Covid-19 inquiry which begins its third module on Monday, said the suspension of normal safeguards was often unjustifiable, costing the public purse billions and eroding trust in political institutions.
It is urging the authorities to investigate the high-risk contracts it has identified.
The charity said it has written to the National Audit Office, the Public Accounts Committee and Chancellor Rachel Reeves with a detailed overview of the findings and the contracts involved.
Chief executive Daniel Bruce said: “That we find multiple red flags in more than £15bn of contacts, amounting to a third of all such spending, points to more than coincidence or incompetence.”
He added that “the Covid procurement response was marked by various points of systemic weakness and political choices that allowed cronyism to thrive, all enabled by woefully inadequate public transparency.
“As far as we can ascertain, no other country used a system like the UK’s VIP lane in their Covid response.
“The cost to the public purse has already become increasingly clear with huge sums lost to unusable PPE from ill-qualified suppliers,” Mr Bruce continued. “We strongly urge the Covid-19 inquiries and planned Covid corruption commissioner to ensure full accountability and for the new government to swiftly implement lessons learned.”
Of a total of £48.1bn of public money spent on private sector contracts related to the Covid-19 pandemic, £14.9bn was written off by the Department of Health & Social Care.
Of that, approximately £1bn was spent on PPE that was deemed unfit for use, according to another NGO, Spotlight on Corruption.
A National Audit Office inquiry into public procurement during the pandemic, published in November 2020, found no evidence of ministerial involvement in procurement decisions or contract management.