Hancock refuses to apologise over High Court ruling on PPE deals
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Matt Hancock has refused to apologise after the High Court ruled he broke the law by failing to publish details of billions of pounds-worth of coronavirus contracts within the required 30-day period.
Mr Justice Chamberlain’s ruling followed a legal challenge brought by three opposition MPs and the Good Law Project over contracts to supply personal protective equipment (PPE), which were awarded without competition.
Chamberlain declared on Friday that the health secretary “failed to publish redacted contracts in accordance with the transparency policy”.
“The secretary of state spent vast quantities of public money on pandemic-related procurements during 2020. The public were entitled to see who this money was going to, what it was being spent on and how the relevant contracts were awarded,” Chamberlain said.
He added in his ruling that Hancock had spent £207,000 of taxpayers’ money fighting the case.
But Hancock defended his department’s spending on PPE deals during the pandemic, claiming it was what any health secretary would have done.
“People can make up their own view about whether I should have told my team to stop buying PPE and spend the time bringing forward those transparency returns by just over a fortnight. Or whether I was right to buy the PPE and get it to the front line. ” Hancock told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show.
“You tell me that that is wrong. You can’t. And the reason you can’t is because it was the right thing to do.”
He added that the legal challenges were “completely second order compared to saving lives”.
“There is no health secretary in history who would have taken the view that they needed to take people off the project of buying PPE in order to ensure that nine months later the health secretary didn’t have a slightly bumpy interview on the Marr programme. It is not what it is about.”
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer criticised Hancock over the health secretary’s lack of transparency but stopped short of calling for his resignation.
He told Sky News’ Sophy Ridge on Sunday: “I don’t want to call for him to resign. I do think he is wrong about the contracts – there have been problems with the contracts, on transparency, on who the contracts have gone to.
“There’s been a lot of wasted money and I think that is a real cause for concern.
“But, at the moment, at this stage of the pandemic, I want all government ministers working really hard to get us through.”