• last year
Housing Minister Lee Rowley has said "appropriate" government processes were in place when awarding contracts for the supply of PPE during the Covid Pandemic.

When asked what Michael Gove knew of Michelle Mone's relation to MedPro, he admitted "usual processes were suspended" to help the NHS secure PPE. Report by Alibhaiz. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
Transcript
00:00 The government's always been clear that there was a process that, in a very, very difficult
00:05 time, where there was a real challenge in getting PPE, and we needed temporarily to
00:10 suspend the usual processes, but we wanted to make sure the PPE was there for the NHS
00:16 to support people who needed it, support nurses and doctors who needed it, that we would look
00:19 at all options.
00:20 But that went through an appropriate process, the National Audit Office has looked at that,
00:24 and now we have a process which is getting back money from companies which did the wrong
00:30 thing or misquoted or didn't answer the good that's done, and then there are criminal investigations
00:34 which are happening where they need to.
00:36 I remember being on calls where government ministers were there from all angles, from
00:40 Conservatives, from Labour, from Scottish Nationalists, from Liberals.
00:43 The job of the government was to try and make sure we got the PPE in place.
00:46 We did that, now we need to make sure that we're learning from that for the future, that's
00:51 the point of the inquiry, and if there was wrongdoing that happened, the government absolutely
00:54 wants that to be worked through.

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