Recommendation 2

The Department failed to meet basic requirements to report publicly ministers’ meetings with external parties. The Ministerial Code requires all departments to report meetings that ministers have had with external parties and any hospitality received, in the interests of transparency and accountability. The Department properly declared only four of the eight meetings on testing that involved its ministers and Randox. In addition, it kept minutes of only two of these meetings. Details of some of these meetings emerged only because documents relating to Randox’s contracts were requested by MPs through the ‘Humble Address’ process and published in February 2022. The Department also did not declare hospitality that the then Secretary of State had received from Randox’s managing director on a ministerial visit to Northern Ireland in 2019 and Mr Hancock has since told us that his ministerial private office considered it was a political event and therefore did not need to be declared.1 The Department’s disclosures and record-keeping have been well below the standards we would expect under any circumstances. In emergency situations it is even more important to ensure that information is correctly documented. Recommendation: In its Treasury Minute response, the Department should set out how it intends to strengthen its transparency processes and ensure that it enforces requirements and takes action where they are not followed.