Recommendation 13

We recognise that given the circumstances the Department had to move quickly. However, regardless of the circumstances, government regulations require departments to carry out due diligence on the organisations that they buy from and exclude organisations that do not comply with various environmental, social and labour laws”.20 The Department told us that it did its best to confirm that ventilators were the correct specification and that sellers were credible—this included looking into suppliers’ financial records, any investigations they had been part of, and anything published about them. When asked specifically whether it had, for example, looked into the issue of modern slavery in its supply chains, the Department said that it was not aware of any links to modern slavery as far as the manufacturers of the devices were concerned. However, it acknowledged that it had not looked at exactly where every component in the machine was produced at the time. The Department agreed to check back through its wider supply chains as far as it could to establish whether any links to modern slavery existed. It cautioned that certain aspects of the supply chain may be difficult to investigate.21 The Department wrote to us one month after the oral evidence session, having considered the matter further. It stated that it and the British Embassy in Beijing had worked closely with external due diligence service providers, to carry out open source checks on Chinese suppliers of ventilators procured during the peak of the pandemic, It said that this due diligence included public records and media checks designed to flag legal, political or reputational risks, including on modern slavery, and assured us that procurement processes were all in line with UK 17 Qq 50–51; C&AG’s Report, paras 3.2, 3.3 18 C&AG’s Report, para 3.10 & Figure 4 19 Qq 66,79 20 The Public Contracts Regulations 2015, sub section 7 21 Qq 71, 74–75 Covid-19: Supply of ventilators 13 procurement regulations during this