1) A thread

A tale of two PPE suppliers.

The company set up on 12 May 2020 by an associate of a Conservative Peer.

The family business in Knowsley, with over 50 years proven track record.

One was given a contract for £122 million.

The other was given the run around.

2) Both said they could supply medical robes.

No prizes for guessing it was the company with the connections to the Conservative Party which was given the contract.

3) PPE Medpro was given the contract 7 weeks after it was set up, a contract for the supply of 25 million gowns, worth £122 million. The contract wasn't advertised to anyone else. It was just awarded to PPE Medpro in secret.

4) Meanwhile, Florence Roby, whose owners live in Formby, in my constituency, had offered to supply 40,000 washable gowns a month to the NHS as early as March, two months before PPE Medpro was even set up.

5) After months of struggling to get a reply from NHS England, Florence Roby were eventually told thanks but no thanks.

6) It took government procurement 2 months to start discussions with Florence Roby.

A month later, in June, NHS England told Florence Roby that they had all the PPE they needed and would not be ordering anything.

7) We now know that the contract to PPE Medpro was awarded about the same time.

8) The robes, which Florence Roby wanted to supply needed a CE mark. There were long delays in this being awarded, not because of any design flaws but because the process was slow. This does not appear to have been a problem for PPE Medpro.

9) Florence Roby were given months of the run-around while friends of the Conservatives seemingly won multi-million pound contracts with no public tender process being carried out. Why weren’t established UK firms given the opportunity to bid for these lucrative contracts?

10) A long established, well respected British company faced long delays in gaining approval for a product, which was desperately needed during the height of the pandemic.

11) Yet a brand new company with no history of supplying PPE, managed to get a product through the process, weeks after the company was set up.

12) The PPE Medpro website says, "All our products are shipped directly from our factories after extensive product testing, safety certification verification and detailed product inspection."

13) It seems fair to assume that PPE Medpro received the CE accreditation during that 7 week period between company registration and award of contract.

14) And remember, the government handed a £108 million contract to a pest control company to also source surgical gowns. The awarding of the contract to the company PestFix is subject to a legal challenge.

15) In July, Labour accused the government of handing out lucrative Covid-19 contracts to Conservative friends and warned that equipment has not been delivered.

16) Ministers were urged to explain how deals worth more than £830m have been awarded to at least 12 different companies for PPE which has “never materialised”.

17) What happened to Florence Roby beggars belief when PPE Medpro was treated so differently.

On any rational reading of the facts, this stinks to high heaven of cronyism and corruption.

18) These sizeable government contracts could have been used to keep people safe by buying high quality PPE from long established, reputable businesses like Florence Roby.

19) And the money spent could have supported British jobs and local economies in those parts of the country in greatest need of support.

20) Remember, PPE Medpro say on their website that all their products are shipped. If so, that lucratvie contract is not going back into the UK economy or supporting British jobs.

21) The UK government has chosen to reward those with connections to the Conservative Party rather than supporting the economy.

22) It is no wonder that this country has had the worst recession in Europe and one of the worst health responses in the world during the pandemic. Ministers have all the wrong priorities and it shows.