Covid-19: “Impossible” to be confident that government awarded Randox contracts properly, say MPs

The UK government’s failure to follow basic rules in awarding £777m of contracts for covid-19 testing to the diagnostics company Randox Laboratories make it “impossible to have confidence” that the contracts were awarded properly, says the parliamentary watchdog on public spending.1In a highly critical report, the Commons Public Account Committee accuses the Department of Health and Social Care of “woefully inadequate record keeping” and failing to meet basic requirements to publicly report ministers’ external meetings or deal with potential conflicts of interest when awarding testing contracts to the company.The committee said that large gaps in the document trail meant it was impossible to say the contracts were awarded properly in the way that would be expected, even allowing for the exceptional circumstances and accelerated processes in place at the time. The first contract, for £132m, was awarded at the height of the covid pandemic in March 2020, when the department…
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