Former health secretary Matt Hancock defends letting friends of Tory politicians be fast tracked to sell medical kit to government – saying ‘That is the statecraft of being a cabinet minister’
Matt Hancock has defended the “VIP lane” which saw friends of Tory politicians fast tracked for lucrative deals selling medical kit to the government during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The disgraced former health secretary was grilled before the Covid-19 Inquiry about how multi-million pound contracts for supplying PPE and other equipment were dolled out. Mr Hancock said messages by him recommending one supplier of medical equipment who was the landlord of a pub in his village were evidence of “my impeccable behaviour”.
He told the inquiry: “Forgive me for being impassioned on this point, but I have been subject to enormous amounts of conspiracy theories about what went on here, when in fact what happened was so many people working as hard as they could to save lives, and they bought more PPE as a result. And therefore people are alive who would otherwise be dead.
“And frankly I’m incredibly proud of the people who themselves have felt under attack because of the way that questions have been put, which does have a material consequence on future responses to a pandemic.”
It was reported in November 2020 that a former neighbour in Hancock’s constituency had been awarded work supplying the government with tens of millions of vials for NHS Covid-19 tests despite having had no previous experience of producing medical supplies.
Alex Bourne, who used to run a pub close to Hancock’s former constituency home in Suffolk, said he initially offered his services to the health secretary by sending him a personal WhatsApp message.
Conservative peer Michelle Mone, who was linked to a multi-million pound contract secured through the VIP lane, will be giving evidence to the inquiry this week in private.
It was put to Mr Hancock that “preferential treatment at triage stage” to PPE sale offers to contacts of ministers was “unjustified” but he insisted a similar VIP lane should be in place for the next pandemic. Mr Hancock said: “I have no doubt that the next time there is a pandemic, people will email the then secretary of state and she or he will need a system to be able to send the requests they receive on.
“The people would contact ministers, and others like MPs, like senior civil servants, like senior clinicians, and say ‘I’ve got an offer’. What you need to do is get that offer into the system as quickly as possible, and it’s become this great big thing. And frankly, we’re going to have to have a system to do something similar [in future].”
Mr Hancock added: “I didn’t care if an offer came through me and somebody had to go back and say, I’m terribly sorry, we’re not taking this one up. What I cared about was getting PPE and I worry that well-meaning but naive people are going to get this wrong for the future and leave more bureaucracy in a future emergency.”
Lord Agnew, who was a Cabinet Office minister responsible for procurement during the pandemic, previously told the inquiry “some crooks” were probably awarded contracts, but defended the VIP lane as necessary to plug shortages.
The inquiry is being held at Dorland House in west London and the latest module is focusing on procurement. Shortages of PPE, particularly in the earlier stages of the pandemic, left NHS workers exposed to the virus.
The inquiry heard that Mr Hancock had sent a message to Lord Agnew in June 2020 asking him to speak to Alex Bourne, who he called a “very impressive guy”. Mr Hancock said: “You can see in all of the communications around this is my impeccable behaviour in terms of taking forward this proposal from somebody who is both a constituent and someone now trying to help in the national effort.”
Mr Hancock was forced to resign as health secretary in June 2021 after breaking his own Covid-19 social distancing restrictions. He was photographed kissing his aide Gina Coladangelo in his ministerial office. It later emerged he was having an extra marital affair with Ms Coladangelo, who was an old university friend of Mr Hancock.
When asked by the barrister for the inquiry team about criticism of prioritising contracts for friends of ministers, Mr Hancock replied: “The problem with some of the analysis around this is that it tries to pretend that these were normal times.
“It’s fine having academics write about this stuff… but it could only have any value at all if you understand what it was like. You weren’t there. This professor wasn’t there, but you’ve got to understand what it was like.”
Mr Hancock added: “That is the statecraft of being a cabinet minister, when you have a calamity of this scale facing you. When you realise that you are going to be the secretary of state facing the first global pandemic in 100 years and when you know that the death toll, if you don’t act and lead, is going to be in the hundreds of thousands.
“Then you are prepared to lean into that and deal with legal headaches later. All that mattered was appropriate action to save lives.”
The National Crime Agency has opened an investigation into PPE Medpro into suspected criminal offences committed in the procurement of PPE.
The company was awarded government contracts worth more than £200 million after Baroness Michelle Mone recommended the firm, which was linked to her husband, to ministers during the Covid pandemic. Baroness Mone, 52, and her husband Doug Barrowman, 59, have denied any wrongdoing.
Lord Bethell also told the Covid inquiry former MP Owen Paterson’s involvement with a company awarded a contract to supply millions of Covid tests was not a conflict of interest. Randox was awarded a contract by the Department of Health and Social Care to supply around 2.7 million tests over a 12-week period in March 2020.
Mr Paterson quit as an MP in 2021 after he was found to have breached rules on paid advocacy when he lobbied ministers on behalf of Randox. Lord Bethell authorised civil servants to start contract negotiations with Randox on March 24.
He called Randox the “standout candidate for working in the diagnostic area”, adding: “We were falling over ourselves to be as transparent and clear-cut and working within the regulations as possible. Everyone knew that there was going to be an inquiry from the very beginning… We knew that we were going to be sitting in a chair like this, answering questions like this.”
