Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 9
9
Our report on Government’s procurement and supply of personal protective equipment during the pandemic found...
Conclusion
Our report on Government’s procurement and supply of personal protective equipment during the pandemic found that a failure to be transparent had opened up Government to accusations of poor value for money, conflicts of interest and preferential treatment of some suppliers, and risked undermining public trust in government procurement and the use of taxpayers’ money.21 BEIS recognised that the involvement of a range of different people being brought in to support government’s decisions created the potential for conflicts of interest. BEIS and the Taskforce share a register of conflicts of interest between their HR Department and Programme Management Office each week. By December 2020, 38 individuals within the Taskforce had registered at least one conflict of interest.22 We asked the Departments how they were ensuring that conflicts of interest were properly managed. Both the Department and BEIS explained that their approach 14 Qq 99, 112, C&AG’s Report, para 2, 1.1, 3.1–3.2 15 Qq 99–100, 116–117 16 Qq 101–102, C&AG’s Report para 3.1–3.5 17 Qq 109–110, C&AG’s Report, para 3.11 18 Qq 110–114, 118–121 19 Q 109 20 Qq 110–111, 117 21 Committee of Public Accounts, COVID-19: Government procurement and supply of personal protective equipment, HC 928, 10 February 2021 22 Q 106, C&AG’s Report, para 3.7 12 COVID-19: Planning for a vaccine Part 1 was the same as for any other area of their work and that they had standard procedures in place to deal with conflicts of interest.23 BEIS told us that the majority of the conflicts of interests within the Taskforce were attributable to members of staff who had been brought in from the private sector, but that in most cases the potential conflicts of interest were small. It explained that it had needed to scale up its business-as-usual conflicts of interest system to deal with the quantity of people coming in, but that this was “not particularly because they have been more conflicted that usual, but because there have been more of the
Government Response
Not Addressed
HM Government
Not Addressed
The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. Ta rget implementation date: April 2021 BEIS has considered its decision-making processes in relation to investing taxpayers’ money and its appointments process and responded to the Committee in March 2021. The Chair of the Taskforce was appointed for 6 months by a direct ministerial appointment process and was unpaid. The government often appoints industry experts into senior leadership roles as this allows us to access a vast range of skill sets and expertise, which may not always exist within the Civil Service. The government assesses each such appointment on a case-by-case basis; if it is appropriate and there is scope to follow the standard recruitment process, then it does so. As the Committee is aware, a new Senior Responsible Owner (SRO) was recently appointed to the Taskforce, taking over from the previous SRO who has left the civil service. An SRO appointment letter is already in place, confirming the SRO’s accountabilities including to Parliament. As the Committee recognises in its report, it was important for the Taskforce to be able to move quickly to secure vaccines on behalf of the UK population. All decisions regarding government spending were made through the established approval routes. However, to provide enhanced flexibility and agility, a number of process innovations were put in place for approvals relating to the Taskforce’s work. The department has considered these process innovations and believes that they continue to ensure appropriate due diligence, assurance to the Accounting Officer in a delegated funding environment and accountability across the portfolio. The department therefore intends to continue with these improvements to the approvals process in relation to the Taskforce’s work, which range from simple changes such as ensuring the timing of departmental approvals Committee meetings could be flexed at short notice to accommodate developments in the Taskforce’s commercial negotiations, to an increase in the department’s spending and commercial delegations from HM Treasury and the Cabinet Office. A cross-departmental ministerial panel was also set up in agreement with HM Treasury and other departments and brings together Ministers from relevant departments to take the final decisions on major investments made by the programme. The department believes that these process improvements played an important role in enabling robust decision-making at pace while ensuring taxpayer value was protected, and will consider whether these improvements should be replicated in other areas of the department’s work and share experiences and lessons learned with other Whitehall departments. The department will write again to the Committee by the end of April 2021 on its lessons learned for the cross-government emergency response.