Recommendation 19

Despite issues with the performance of the first contract, in October 2020 Randox was awarded a contract extension worth £328 million (around two and a half times the value of the original contract), again without competition. At the time, the Cabinet Office questioned why the Department had not used a competitive tender for the extension. The Department explained that the months between March and October 2020 had been “extremely intense” and that it simply had not had time to go through a competitive contract process.36 It did, however, acknowledge that the testing market had matured by October 2020 and there was a more competitive range of suppliers.37 Contract documentation prepared before the extension was awarded noted that a competitive tender was not the preferred course of action for the Department because Randox was considered a fundamental part of meeting testing targets at that time.38 The Department told us that even though a variety of suppliers were providing testing services by then, Randox was “already an important part of the infrastructure” and that government needed to utilise all of the testing capacity available to it.39 Contract price and profits