Chaos, cronyism and corruption stories continue to engulf the Conservative Government as the lobbying scandal continues with new stories each day of MPs making vast sums of money from second jobs.
But the details that emerged about the VIP-fast track system for Covid contracts is even more obscene.
At least 47 companies won billions of pounds worth of COVID-related contracts via the VIP fast-track referral system. Every single one of the companies, many of whom had no previous experience in manufacturing medical supplies, was politically linked to the Tory party.
The Government’s lame defence is that there was no time to procure equipment through the usual channels, but legitimate UK companies specialising in the manufacture of PPE, were bypassed for Tory donors and friends.
Some of the contracts weren’t even honoured or the stuff they produced was defective and unusable.
At the time, health and social care workers were dying for lack of PPE, care home managers and thousands on the frontline were trying desperately to procure their own PPE, making their own or relying on the kindness of local businesses and even schools to donate materials.
The priority for this Government in the worst public health crisis in a century was to line the pockets of their mates.
And we don’t yet know about the VIP lane for the £37bn of public money spent on Test and Trace contracts which was an abject failure.
This week, Labour gave the Conservatives the chance to do the right thing and vote to immediately stop MPs working on dodgy second jobs. They didn’t do it and instead presented a watered-down version of Labour’s plans.
Fewer than 10 MPs are likely to be affected by Boris Johnson’s proposed rule changes on second jobs, despite the prime minister conceding it was a “total mistake” to back disgraced MP Owen Paterson, admitting to his own backbench MPs that his handling of the corruption scandal was bungled. He said “on a clear road I crashed the car into a ditch.”
Britain deserves better than a Prime Minister steering us deeper into corruption. We need a government that governs in the public interest not in their own.
