By John Pickard
The revelations that came out in the Covid inquiry in the last month weren’t really revelations. We all knew that Tory ministers were lying through their teeth during the Covid pandemic, although it is only now that their lies have been ‘officially’ exposed.
The really story of the pandemic isn’t that so many thousands needlessly lost their lives because of Tory incompetence – although that is horrific enough – it is the sheer greed and corruption that surrounded the multi-billiion pound procurement process at the heart of the Government’s Covid response.
The Tories have fine-tuned their greed to a fine art. Never a party to waste a good crisis, they set up a “VIP lane” during the Covid pandemic so that the friends, family and associates of the Conservative Party could get lucrative government contracts for PPE and other necessities. It was revealed only a few months ago (Financial Times August 28), and years after the peak of the pandemic, that information on £8bn-worth of Covid contracts has still not been published, including the details of the contracts or the payees.
One of the most blatant cases of profiteering was that of Lady Michelle Mone, a nonentity (albeit a wealthy one) who had been elevated to the House of Lords by David Cameron. She and her husband were among those who wasted no time taking advantage of the “VIP lane”, Mone lobbying for their company, PPE Medpro, even while it was being set up and before it was registered at Companies House. Her lobbying was such a roaring success – Michael Gove seems to be the minister she buttered up – that PPE Medpro won contracts worth more than £200mn, mostly for PPE that proved to be worthless.
Afterwards, and for three years, Lady Mone and her husband, Doug Barrowman, lied through their teeth, denying any connection to PPE Medpro, even issueing statements through solicitors to that effect. This was despite investigations by the national media that not only showed they had such links, but that £60mn from the proceeds of the contracts had been put in a trust for the benefit of Mone’s children.
Not a shred of contrition
Now, three years later, Mone and Barrowman have come clean, but even in the noble lady’s admission of lying, she doesn’t show a shred of contrition. “I don’t honestly see there is a case to answer”, she told the BBC, “I can’t see what we have done wrong”. She admitted in the same interview that “of course” she “stands to gain” from the contracts. Her husband let the cat out of the bag talking about standing to gain: “That’s what you do when you are in a privileged position of making money.”
“We’ve only done one thing” Mone complained, “which was to lie to the press”. For three years. What she and Barrowman has done may be technically ‘legal’, although the government has been forced by public opinion to at least appear to want to recover some of the money. But by any normal standards of morality they have simply joined in with others in plundering public assets.
Rishi Sunak, now Prime Minister, was Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time, and he cannot possibly have not known what was going on with the vast sums being thrown around during the pandemic. Which is the reason for the ongoing spat between him and the still unrepentant Lady Mone.
“They all knew about my involvement”
While Sunak claims to be taking the Mone affair “seriously”, the lady herself wrote on her X account, “What is Rishi Sunak talking about? I was honest with the Cabinet Office, the government and the NHS in my dealings with them. They all knew about my involvement from the very beginning”. She also claims now that Michael Gove knew of her involvement.
Which seems to imply, not only that Sunak and Gove knew how the ‘VIP Lane’ operated – but we knew that already – but also that for three years they were silent while Mone lied about her ‘non-connection’ to PPE Medpro.
Lord James Bethell, on the other hand, who was another health minister Mone lobbied during the pandemic, said on X that she hadn’t been “honest about her financial interest” when discussing the PPE Medpro bid with him. “She didn’t explain ‘from the very beginning’ about her financial ‘involvement’,” he said.
As regards those who exploited the pandemic to “make a quick buck”, Shadow Health Minister Wes Streeting said, “we want our money back.” That is just about the only useful comment he has made in three years in post, but at least he is right.
What is more important, however, is not a fight to recover money fleeced from the taxpayer here and there, but to expose a much wider and more rotten system. Michelle Mone’s real crime, as far as the Establishment is concerned, is getting caught with her grubby fingers in the till. She is not the ‘exception’ but the tip of a very large iceberg.
What passes as ‘government’ for the Tories – and that includes local government as well as every national department – is no more than a vehicle for dispensing large funds to the Conservatives’ friends in business. If any second-rate services or goods happen to be supplied as a result, that is entirely secondary, and almost an afterthought to the lucrative issue of contracts.
£259bn spent on procurement not giving ‘value for money’
We are not talking peanuts here. According to an article in the Financial Times this week (December 13), “The UK government has been unable to demonstrate taxpayers were getting value for money from the £259bn spent on public procurement in 2021-22, according to across-party group of MPs”. Many of the contracts awarded by government departments were never subject to any kind of competitive tendering.
The right wing press are fond of pushing the (false) idea of a ‘dependency’ culture among the poorest sections of society and those on welfare benefits, but there is little attention paid to the welfare culture as it applies to big businesses and public procurement.
It warms the heart to see Lady Mone being pursued by the Fraud Squad and for her and her family to be put on the spot for fleecing the public – although it remains to be seen how far legal action will go – but the real aim of the labour movement should not be the tip, but the iceberg itself. Our aim should not be just to expose the odd fraudster here and there, but abolishing altogether a system that promotes private outsourcing and profiteering on the public purse.
