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Latest 24 September 2024
Tories shelled out £114m in payouts for undelivered Covid contracts
The Tories made million-pound deals with firms to supply medical equipment which wasn’t delivered, or was cancelled. Tory-linked companies are taking the lion’s share of the payouts from these failed deals.
By Max Colbert
The health department and the UK Health Security Agency have shelled out £114m after cancelling contracts for equipment that was never needed, or items which didn’t meet specifications, a Good Law Project investigation has revealed. All these payouts were made before the election. And 86% of this money has been handed to firms linked with senior Tory figures.
The biggest payout was to one of these Tory-linked companies, Oxford Nanopore Technologies PLC, which bagged £60m after an “amicable resolution” to a dispute over a contract to supply testing equipment.
The former Tory chair Lord Feldman, who pushed contracts for at least £64m through the Tories’ unlawful VIP lane, met with the company and then-health secretary Matt Hancock on 1 April 2020. Two months later the firm landed a contract for £112m, and signed with Feldman’s PR company, Tulchan Communications.
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According to the health department, “a number of kits” were received in 2020, but by April 2021 the department “no longer had a requirement” for these products, so it “terminated the contract before taking the maximum quantity allowable”.
Another huge chunk went to another Tory-linked company, Ecolog, which got a payout for £38m even though it never provided any services at all.
Ecolog bagged a slot on the secretive VIP Test and Trace lane after an exchange of WhatsApp messages between a Tory donor, Mustafa Mohammed, and Hancock in June 2020.
The health department signed a legal letter of intent in September 2020, which meant the firm was guaranteed to receive millions, even after the department decided the following year that it no longer needed Ecolog’s “mobilisation costs” and testing services in 2021.
Similar payments to firms including Ortho Clinical Diagnostics, Beijing Aeonmed and Jason Offshore bring the total paid out in settlement agreements to £114m.
The health department said, “This government will not tolerate waste and the chancellor has announced plans to appoint a Covid Corruption Commissioner.”
“This week the chancellor announced a block on any PPE contract being abandoned or waived until it has been independently assessed by the commissioner, who will be appointed next month.”
Oxford Nanopore, Lord Feldman, and Ecolog were approached for comment.