Recommendation 18

For example, the Department explained that both the Department for International Trade and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office helped it to purchase ventilators directly from China, which it viewed as the largest untapped market for ventilators. Both departments played a substantial role in assessing offers, which meant that the Department was able to secure orders relatively quickly and at a similar level to normal market prices.30 Similarly, the Cabinet Office sought advice from the Ministry of Defence’s Cost Assurance and Analysis Service as part of its process to gain assurance that suppliers’ costs were reasonable. It told us that this approach mean it spent an average of £10,000 excluding VAT on the ventilators that were manufactured, which it said was comparable to those bought on the open market.31