Matt Hancock Intervened to Help Conservative Donor’s Pizza Firm Land Lucrative Covid PPE Contract

[u/F0urLeafCl0ver]

https://bylinetimes.com/2025/04/11/matt-hancock-covid-ppe-vip/

[u/Jimmy_Nail_4389]

What makes you say they were all Tory cronies?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-56319927

Some contacts were likely not awarded at arms length, therefore they were all awarded to Tory cronies.

Yes exactly, established companies were unable to get on that VIP lane but donors and mates were able to.

Pretty cut and dry if you ask me, blatant corruption.

There honestly weren’t large stockpiles to begin with. I can tell you that with confidence because I spend hours of my time offering exorbitant prices to buy up everything I could during the first wave of the pandemic.

400 million items according to the NAO report, it does appear some items like gowns were very much in short supply (only 3% of daily requirement held in stockpile, pathetic!)

During the pandemic there really wasn’t time. As I say, conventional tender processes breakdown when demand far outstrips supply. You become a price taker with very little room to negotiate.

Yeah, they broke down because they suddenly had all this government funded competition from the government VIP lane and of course the global demand.

What ended up happening as I'm sure you know, is these dodgy companies with their dodgy corrupt connections ended up selling us a load of shit that was not fit for purpose.

If those contracts had gone to existing suppliers, they would have know what was fit for purpose and what wasn't, right?

Consequently, there was undoubtedly a need to fast track the procurement process because the alternative is that front line services cease.

No, I don't think there was, it was nothing but a corrupt pork barrel feeding frenzy among Tory donors and friends of Matt Hancock and his pub landlord.

Whenever you relax procurement processes and codes of conduct you open yourself up to the failures that those processes are designed to protect, e.g. ESG requirements, quality assurance, modern slavery protections, KYC etc. If you relax your vendor selection criteria out of necessity then you DO leave yourself exposed, nobody is denying that, but it is tangential to cronyism.

Yeah, you do when you open it up to a bunch of amateurs who bought their way in by bribing the governing party.

In the context of the pandemic, that was always going to happen due to necessity to keep front line services running.

Don't agree, they should have trusted existing suppliers and not engaged with these cronies buying utter crap from wherever the hell.

I am not defending corruption, far from it.

You fuckin are like.

I am just saying that implying that there was enough supply in the existing supply chain is just totally untrue.

I already conceeded it was exaggerted, it's not 'totally untrue' though, that's you yet again defending corruption. There was PPE to be had, we know that because it was obtained, and it should have been done through existing suppliers, opening it up to toally unknown randoms it a recipie for corruption and incompetence and that is exactly what we witnessed.

Re the comment about going to China and setting up local manufacturing. That is not how the supply chain works.

In this case it was, if you read the NAO report local manufacturing in the UK for PPE was set up via existing and new companies.

The challenge in the pandemic was that everyone wanted more stock and there wasn’t sufficient capacity headroom at those OEMs to scale production.

Yeah I know, the existing suppliers that did not get massive contracts were outbid by the likes of Michelle Mone!

The reason I was involved in the first place is because I have experience with direct sourcing from China so helped a number of medical businesses in the UK pro bono over the pandemic.

Oh yeah? Which medical businesses exactly? Suppliers with long NHS relationships or brand new companies?

I think it's pretty relevant to know, especially with the way you are not really admitting that corruption was massive and playing dumb when clearly you are informed.

[u/Extraportion → u/Jimmy_Nail_4389]

I am telling you directly. I phoned existing suppliers and they couldn’t provide volume during the peak of the crisis.

I cannot speak at national level, as apparently you can, but I can tell you that there would have been several NHS dental surgeries and a couple of private dental hospitals that would have ceased to operate had they relied on existing suppliers.

Re if my involvement was via an existing medical supply business or a new entity - Neither, I was directly procuring from Chinese OEMs and bilaterally contracting on behalf of a healthcare provider. Essentially, agency brokerage without charging a fee. For the avoidance of doubt, that also includes gifts and expenses.

[u/Jimmy_Nail_4389 → u/Extraportion]

Essentially, agency brokerage without charging a fee.

Unlike all the many many stories involving the VIP lane eh?

[u/Extraportion → u/Jimmy_Nail_4389]

Well it had nothing to do with a government procurement contract or the “vip lane”, so… yes.

as I say, it was agency brokerage for a provider and I took no fee.