Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many companies tendered for the Covid-19 contact-tracing system contract for England.
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. These include a direct award due to extreme urgency or the absence of competition. Under the regulation contracting authorities may enter into contracts without competing or advertising the requirement.
Over 1,000 purchase orders have been raised with suppliers for COVID-19 related work, the majority through a direct award, this includes the contracts for the contact tracing system.