Experienced PPE suppliers were ignored by officials at the height of the pandemic, allege campaigners

A PPE firm from Bradford has alleged that the Department of Health and Social Care “unfairly prioritised” some suppliers and breached transparency rules at the height of the pandemic last year.

Multibrands, owned by Imran Faisel Hussain and Rizwana Syeda Hussain, said officials “went quiet” after it wrote to the government in March 2020 advertising its capacity to supply 100 million masks from its warehouse in China, The Times said.

Ayanda Capital, whose senior adviser worked for the Department for International Trade (DIT), ended up supplying the government after it was awarded a £252 million deal for personal protective equipment, the newspaper said.

An undisclosed number of the masks did not meet standards, however, and could not be used in the NHS, it added.

The discrepancy was highlighted on the first day of a judicial review brought by campaigners against health secretary Matt Hancock over the award of PPE contracts worth about £700m to three companies with limited previous healthcare experience - Ayanda Capital, PestFix and Clandeboye,

According to the report, newly released emails show that PPE supplier Multibrands, which has been in business for more than 20 years, was ignored by government officials while a venture capitalist firm was deemed an “urgent VIP case” because it came with a recommendation from a government adviser.

On the opening day of a High Court hearing, Jason Coppel QC, representing the campaigners - The Good Law Project and EveryDoctor, accused the government of a “catastrophic waste of public funds”, the media report added.

He added that majority of the PPE procured from the companies by officials had been unusable.

Ayanda Capital, whose senior adviser worked for the department for international trade (DIT), ended up supplying the government after it was awarded a £252m deal for personal protective equipment. An undisclosed number of the masks did not meet standards, however, and could not be used in the NHS, the report said.

The campaigners submitted documents to the court which revealed exchanges between officials about the merits of different suppliers.

In one email from April last year, Ayanda Capital was described as an 'urgent VIP case'. Two days later, a Cabinet Office official became frustrated that the Ayanda contract had not yet been approved.

The official wrote: “Can we expedite this one please? It’s a big opportunity — [redacted number of] masks — and we are close to loosing [sic] it. Our contact has close ties to DIT so wouldn’t be a good outcome.”

A week later another official sent an email warning that Andrew Mills, an adviser to both Ayanda and Liz Truss, the trade secretary, could inform others in government about the slow progress of the contract. The official wrote: “Andrew will escalate as high as he can possibly go!!”

PestFix, a company with no previous healthcare experience, was similarly described as 'VIP' in other exchanges shared with the court, the newspaper report said.

PestFix, a family-run pest control firm, had been prioritised because one of its former directors was an 'old school friend' of the father-in-law of a senior civil servant involved in procurement at the department of health. The company won a contract worth £108 million, The Times report added.

At the hearing the campaigners tried to secure the release of information about how much money was spent on unusable PPE. But,  Justice O’Farrell ruled that the figures were not relevant to the case.

"The government had put together an unprecedented programme, on a huge scale, at commendable speed, during a serious crisis. At a time of national lockdown and rising rates of infection and death, it was the duty of the defendant to secure, without delay, unprecedented volumes of personal protective equipment and medical devices in order to slow the spread of the virus and save lives," said Michael Bowsher QC, representing the Department of Health in the case.

The case is being held remotely and is expected to end on Tuesday (25).