We did what we needed to do to protect NHS and save lives

■ Further to your report into the National Audit Office finding a lack of transparency in how the government awarded Covid contracts (Metro, Wed).

At the pandemic’s height, health services around the world faced unprecedented PPE demand, far exceeding supply. As the prime minister said, ‘We shifted heaven and earth to get over 32 billion items of PPE.’ Hundreds of officials worked night and day to make this happen – to protect our NHS and care sector, and save lives.

We are proud of what we achieved. The National Audit Office in its report acknowledged that government ‘secured unprecedented volumes of essential supplies necessary to protect frontline workers’ and despite the need for extreme speed only 0.5 per cent of equipment received did not meet the contracted specifications.

Last week, the joint NHS and MOD PPE Technical Assurance Team have been awarded the Chartered Quality Institute’s Quality Team of the Year Award, ‘who, through their rigour, skill,

and determination, saved the UK over £2billion by reducing the rejection rate of PPE’.

Using direct contract awards for emergencies is in line with regulations, dating from 2015. Rules were not changed. Other governments and public authorities internationally and across the UK used similar approaches.

We inevitably had to prioritise the most credible PPE offers to avoid missing viable offers. All offers were put through the same eight-stage process of official checks and due diligence. To quote from the NAO, ‘ministers had properly declared their interests and we found no evidence of their involvement in procurement decisions or contract management’.

We thank the NAO for its work, which was based on an analysis of just

20 out of 8,600 contracts. We accept there are lessons to learn but make no apology for focusing first on securing PPE that the NHS urgently required. Lives depended on it.