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March 29, 2024, 08:12:26 AM

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Tory PPE "VIP lane" revelations

Started by Fambo Number Mive, November 16, 2021, 10:19:31 AM

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Fambo Number Mive

As this is covid related I thought I would keep it in this forum rather than in the Tory sleaze thread

QuoteA leaked document has revealed which Conservative MPs and Peers funnelled companies through a 'VIP lane' for lucrative PPE contracts, without competition. A staggering £1.6 billion worth of contracts were awarded as a result of referrals from just ten politicians at the heart of the Conservative party. The leaked list of the 47 companies in the VIP lane, first seen by Politico, can be found here.

Michael Gove MP, Matt Hancock MP, Esther McVey MP, and Steve Brine MP are among the Conservative politicians who referred companies to the VIP lane. Those lucky enough to receive this VIP treatment were more than ten times more likely to win a contract than companies that went without.

Government claimed that the VIP lane for PPE contracts "was widely advertised across Government as a way of more quickly triaging offers of support". But the explosive list of companies in the 'VIP lane' shows that no other political party successfully referred companies via this fast-tracked route...

https://goodlawproject.org/news/conservative-politicians-vip-lane/

Fambo Number Mive

Meanwhile there have been more revelations about how well private hospitals have done out of the pandemic:

QuoteAt the outset of the pandemic, the British government struck a remarkable deal with the private hospital sector. Twenty-six private companies were enlisted to provide beds, staff and equipment to assist with England's COVID response.

The multi-billion-pound plan was for private hospitals to provide "vital buffer capacity" to the National Health Service (NHS). The taxpayer would cover 100% of the operating costs of the mainly foreign-owned private healthcare multinationals, which would in return supposedly treat COVID patients, provide care when the NHS could not and redeploy staff to COVID hotspots...

NHS data shows that the private sector cared for just 0.08% of the national total of COVID patients during the pandemic. The contract gave the NHS access to 8,000 beds in 187 private hospitals, but those beds were occupied by no more than one COVID patient a day for 59% of the first year of the pandemic. On average, the private hospital sector cared for eight COVID patients a day, between March 2020 and March 2021, while the NHS averaged 10,000.

Even though the government was paying private hospitals to treat patients who couldn't be looked after in NHS facilities, NHS-funded activity in the private sector actually fell by 43% compared to 2019. Rather than stepping up and delivering more services, private hospitals provided 235,000 fewer elective procedures and 1.3 million fewer appointments for NHS patients compared to 2019. Equivalent NHS activity fell by only 21.5%, suggesting it adapted to the pressures of the pandemic better than the private sector...

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/ournhs/uk-governments-pandemic-deal-was-win-win-for-private-hospitals/


bgmnts

Isnt it just weird to think of a hospital profiting off anything? I suppose it's nowhere near as bad as the arms industry but it's so counter intuitive to me.

Anyway yeah tories are scum exhibit #38366408