Recommendation 5

The Department’s COVID-19 pandemic procurement highlighted the importance of achieving transparency in respect of how it identifies and manages declarations of interests. A considerable amount of taxpayers’ money was spent on products from new suppliers, including those with no previous experience of supplying certain Department of Health and Social Care 2020–21 Annual Report and Accounts 7 types of products, increasing the risk that the Department entered into contracts where conflicts of interest existed. The Department’s existing processes for collating and assessing potential related parties and related party transactions did not provide the necessary completeness assurance over the interests held by senior individuals. The Department had to subsequently rectify this and undertake further work, with a number of additional interests identified and disclosed in its Annual Report and Accounts as a result. Recommendation: The Department should maintain and improve accountability by embedding their revised processes so that these are undertaken on a timely basis each and every year and normalise the transparency of the results by inclusion of the full list of interests identified in every Annual Report and Accounts.