Coronavirus: Contact Tracing

(asked on 30th June 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what criteria his Department uses to assess the suitability of companies for involvement in the NHS test and trace service for covid-19; what contractual obligations those companies have; and how those obligations are monitored.


Answered by
Nadine Dorries Portrait
Nadine Dorries
This question was answered on 19th August 2020

Guidance on how contracting authorities should respond to COVID-19 was published on 18 March at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/procurement-policy-note-0120-responding-to-covid-19

Authorities are allowed to procure goods, services and works with extreme urgency in exceptional circumstances using regulation 32(2)(c) under the Public Contract Regulations 2015. Available options include direct award due to extreme urgency; direct award due to absence of competition or protection of exclusive rights; call off from an existing framework agreement or dynamic purchasing system; call for competition using a standard procedure with accelerated timescales and extending or modifying a contract during its term.

The Department assesses the suitability of companies against information already held if they are on a Government framework contract or through direct discussions and information exchanges if they are not. Contracts are placed in line with Departmental terms and conditions which include clauses for contract management.

The Department has a contract management function which supports operational contract managers within the business and the Test and Trace contracts follow the same approach.

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