The Covid Contracts Scandal - Where’s the Accountability?
Tory donors, crony contracts, vanished billions, and a system still wide open to abuse.
Boris Johnson was at the Covid Inquiry this week — still hiding behind that mop of hair and the familiar smirk.
He was questioned about lockdowns and their impact on young people. But there’s one topic Johnson has consistently dodged - the huge Covid contracts handed to firms with Conservative Party links.
When the pandemic hit, Johnson’s government called for suppliers of PPE. But behind the scenes, a secret “VIP lane” was set up for firms recommended by Tory MPs and peers.
Firms in this VIP lane were ten times more likely to be given lucrative Covid contracts, a National Audit Office investigation subsequently found.
The scale is staggering. The UK has incinerated £8.6 billion worth of PPE — and over £1 billion of that came from VIP suppliers.
Earlier this month, PPE Medpro was ordered to pay back £122 million for unusable PPE. Tory peer Michelle Mone, who had spent years denying involvement, finally admitted she was the beneficiary of a trust that received £29 million from the firm’s profits. Her husband, Doug Barrowman, is estimated to have made £60 million.
And Mone isn’t alone.
Tory donor David Meller’s company was given around £160m in PPE contracts after being referred by Michael Gove’s office. Another firm - that had no previous PPE specialism - run by a Conservative councillor was handed a PPE deal worth £276million. Another business run by an advisor to Liz Truss was given £250m.
The list goes on. And on.
Many of these businesses had no history in medical supply. Some were created just weeks before landing contracts worth hundreds of millions.
So where did all that money go? And why, five years on, has nobody been held to account?
To dig into this, I spoke with Russell Scott, a journalist who has followed the Covid contracts scandal from the start. We worked together when I was at openDemocracy, exposing how politically connected firms were handed vast sums during the crisis.
Since then, Russell has doggedly pursued the story — first with the Good Law Project, and now with Byline Times and in his new book, VIP Lane: Cronyism and the Pandemic.
Russell shows that while the pandemic was a global crisis, the cronyist response of Johnson and his government was unlike another.
“No other country in the world has a VIP Lane. No other country judged the quality of a PPE offer on the political connections of the firm,” he told me.
The waste is jaw-dropping. A million pallets of PPE have been destroyed — enough to stretch from Land’s End to John o’ Groats. The cost of that wasted PPE alone could have paid for 200,000 nurses.
Yet accountability remains almost completely absent. The VIP Lane has been ruled unlawful, but the Covid Inquiry hasn’t called in the companies that profited from it.
And while Labour promised to crack down on Covid fraud, the government’s “Covid Commissioner”, Tom Hayhoe, has just a one-year, part-time contract. You can’t expose systemic corruption without the resources to do it.
Meanwhile, Democracy for Sale has spent years fighting Freedom of Information battles just to uncover who referred these firms — and how.
Russell raises vital questions: Should political donors be eligible for public contracts? What about the revolving door between ministers and the private sector?
Right now, it feels like nothing has changed. As Russell put it: “If there was a pandemic tomorrow, you could see another VIP Lane being set up.”
It doesn’t have to be this way. The forthcoming Elections Bill offers a chance to start cleaning up British politics - that’s why we have been pushing for the government to take it.
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Thanks for this reporting Peter and Russell. I knew there had been a lot of "under the table" dealing with Covid supplies but never thought it was into the Billions of £'s! Truly it's shocking when you think that that kind money could have been used to save lives for many years. Mone is the only one that seems to have been brought to the fore, maybe it's a case of "throwing her under the bus" because she's not really "one of us." Not that I don't think the bus shouldn't back up and roll over her again mind you. As we've known for centuries, the "upper class" protects it's own. I don't know about you but I don't think this enquiry is going to come to anything. The bottle blonde PM at the time will walk away unscathed as will most of his hangers on. As a British person I've always wanted to hold ourselves to a higher standard. This saga makes me ashamed. I know too many people will be pessimistic and say "that's just the way it is!" Lying by politicians, even when in office has become the norm. I hope Starmer will get off his ass and start prosecuting all those 'fly-by-night' entities first and making them pay back the money they made illegally. Or at least recovering most of it by confiscating those items such as private jets and mansions that were bought with their illegal gains. I'm afraid that we'll never get rid of cronyism entirely BUT if we can get rid of BIG money in politics it'll be a start. Businesses that know that their money won't buy them "special consideration" will be loathe to donate. Those that do donate currently usually do it to more than one party hoping that the one that gets in will now OWE them a FAVOUR. I believe that transparency is the key. If we know what entity is giving those candidates money or "gifts" it would give us a clearer picture. I know that they can disguise themselves via shell companies and such but something needs to be done, and soon. The world according to trump has already arrived on our shores and we need to make a battle plan of action. With real teeth and not just words and rules that they all ignore with the high priced lawyers who help them around those irritating facts!
If they did not fulfill their contract or if they lied /mislead the contract then they must pay back ot face prison. If the Government deliberately mislead then they must be held to account. If that does not or cannot happy laws need to be changed to make this illegal and punishable.