All par for the course I suppose but still, pretty shocking to see the corruption up close. It’s hard to feel that much sympathy for our noble British Manufacturers though, like Rizwana Hussain and her ‘factories’ in India and China. Go to the link below for the full story, the page is semi interactive and wouldn’t really cut and paste properly.
Waste, Negligence and Cronyism: Inside Britain’s Pandemic Spending
In the desperate scramble for protective gear and other equipment, politically connected companies reaped billions.
By Jane Bradley, Selam Gebrekidan and Allison McCannDec. 17, 2020
As the Covid-19 lockdown went into effect in March, areas like London’s South Bank, across the Thames from the British Houses of Parliament, became deserted.Andrew Testa for The New York Times
LONDON — When the pandemic exploded in March, British officials embarked on a desperate scramble to procure the personal protective equipment, ventilators, coronavirus tests and other supplies critical to containing the surge. In the months following those fevered days, the government handed out thousands of contracts to fight the virus, some of them in a secretive “V.I.P. lane” to a select few companies with connections to the governing Conservative Party.
To shine a light on one of the greatest spending sprees in Britain’s postwar era, The New York Times analyzed a large segment of it, the roughly 1,200 central government contracts that have been made public, together worth nearly $22 billion. Of that, about $11 billion went to companies either run by friends and associates of politicians in the Conservative Party, or with no prior experience or a history of controversy. Meanwhile, smaller firms without political clout got nowhere.
“The government had license to act fast because it was a pandemic, but we didn’t give them permission to act fast and loose with public money,” said Meg Hillier, a lawmaker with the opposition Labour Party and chair of the powerful Public Accounts Committee. “We’re talking billions of pounds, and it’s quite right that we ask questions about how that money was spent.”
The procurement system was cobbled together during a meeting of anxious bureaucrats in late March, and a wealthy former investment banker and Conservative Party grandee, Paul Deighton, who sits in the House of Lords, was later tapped to act as the government’s czar for personal protective equipment.
Eight months on, Lord Deighton has helped the government award billions of dollars in contracts –– including hundreds of millions to several companies where he has financial interests or personal connections.
The contracts that have been made public are only a part of the total. Citing the urgency of the pandemic, the government cast aside the usual transparency rules and awarded contracts worth billions of dollars without competitive bidding. To date, just over half of all of the contracts awarded in the first seven months remain concealed from the public, according to the National Audit Office, a watchdog agency.
Cont at link…