(Ashton-under-Lyne)
(Lab): The Leader of the House talks about socialists, but
let us talk about the Conservatives. He will be aware that a
Conservative peer is under investigation by the National Crime
Agency over fraud. PPE Medpro, a company linked to
, was handed hundreds of
millions of pounds in Government contracts during the pandemic.
It is now reported to have been raided by the police, as has her
home. There are serious questions about the due diligence
performed on that company, so can the Leader of the House let us
know what evidence they hold and why they are refusing to put a
single sheet of it out into the public domain? What do they have
to hide?
The Minister for Brexit Opportunities and Government Efficiency
( ): I should just say
that he is no longer the Leader of the House. I know we all
assume he is, but there we are.
Mr Rees-Mogg: I was going to point out to the right hon.
Lady that business questions will follow in due course and that
that would be her opportunity to raise such things with the
Leader of the House.
: Well, that was a way
of deflecting from the actual serious question that the
Government are not willing to answer because they know there is
suspicion about the way in which they handled those
contracts.
On the topic of protecting the public purse, as we speak this
Government are frittering away almost half a million pounds a day
on storing personal protective equipment unfit for human use.
That is after £10 billion has already been wasted, alone, on
unusable, overpriced and underdelivered PPE. In fact, useless PPE
storage is costing the taxpayer nearly half a million pounds a
day. Will the Government’s procurement Bill close the loophole
and prevent cronyism from corrupting our politics and wasting
public money?
Mr Rees-Mogg: These charges made by the socialists are
completely false. They have no bearing on reality and they
completely ignore what was the requirement two years ago. We
needed PPE. There was a global shortage. Everyone in the world
was buying PPE, and British manufacturing managed to turn round
and supply it in unprecedented quantities. If I remember rightly
from when I was Leader of the House, domestically produced PPE
went from about 1% to well over 70%, possibly even over 80%. This
was an enormous effort, and it has to be said that everyone was
calling for it at the time, because it was urgent to protect
people in care homes, in hospitals and in offices as masks and
PPE were demanded and this was delivered. The right hon. Lady
would have sat on her hands and done nothing, expecting it to
take months and months to procure a single pair of gloves.
