Randox Covid Contracts
Debate between Angela Rayner and Emma Hardy(2 years, 5 months ago)
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Angela Rayner
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. This goes to the nub of the problem. The Prime Minister—even when asked to apologise by the Leader of the Opposition; even when his Ministers have already apologised; and even when Conservative Members will not attend this debate because they are embarrassed by their Government’s actions—refuses to accept his responsibility. That is why we are calling for transparency today.
Emma Hardy (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)
I would like the Minister to think for a moment about the companies that were not awarded contracts. Arco, in my constituency, is known for being the UK’s leader in safety equipment. It had a warehouse full of personal protective equipment that it would have been willing to give to the NHS but, for some reason, it could not find its way through the maze of bureaucracy involved in awarding Government contracts. We hear about companies being awarded contracts that had no record of expertise or knowledge, yet companies such as Arco were denied. How can that be right?
Angela Rayner
My hon. Friend makes an important point. We have heard about this distinction from other companies and organisations that have experience in the field; they feel as though they were blocked and there was not a transparent process for them to go through. We have seen concerns about how procurement decisions were being made for companies such as Randox, with the lack of any paper trail showing that they were made properly. How is that fair? The question is very simple: what are Ministers hiding?
Public Services
Debate between Angela Rayner and Emma Hardy(4 years, 6 months ago)
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Emma Hardy (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making such an incredible speech—[Laughter.] School uniform grants are available in Wales, which has a Labour Government, in Scotland, under the SNP, and in Northern Ireland; England is the only part of the United Kingdom that does not give school uniform grants. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is because this Government do not seem to count or value the children who might possibly need a grant?
Angela Rayner
My hon. Friend makes an important point. Conservative Members might laugh, but the spiralling cost of school uniforms and the problems that the poorest in our society face in dealing with that is no laughing matter. It is a matter for England and for this Government, and it is directly a matter for those Conservative Members who have shamefully done nothing about this issue. Parents across England will be listening to this debate and will recognise who is on their side.
It is the same story on home education. The Government were consulting on new legislation, but it is now nowhere to be seen. Then there is the Augar review, the flagship that has now sunk without trace. When it was published, the previous Education Secretary promised me:
“We will come forward with the conclusion of the review at the end of the year, at the spending review. That has always been the plan.”—[Official Report, 4 June 2019; Vol. 661, c. 58.]
We have had a spending review and we have had a Queen’s Speech, but we have had no conclusion and there is apparently no plan. I can only hope that the Education Secretary will be able to tell us in the wind-up that these remain Government commitments and, if so, when the Government intend to act on them. This is particularly absurd when their legislative programme is a wish-list of Bills that have no chance of getting a majority in this House, because the Secretary of State knows full well that there would be cross-party support for some of these issues.