Transparency is vital

Further to the National Audit Office finding a lack of transparency in how the government awarded Covid contracts.

I’m sure the government did everything it thought necessary to secure PPE and quickly, as its chief commercial officer Gareth Rhys Williams says (MetroTalk, Mon).

But unfortunately – and as Mr Williams I’m sure knows – the world doesn’t work on the basis that the government can say ‘you can know that everything was above board just because we’ve told you it was’.

The full details of the contracts – paid for with taxpayers’ money – need to be published so we can see everything was done properly.

And by properly, I mean the deal was struck because it was a good one for the public, not a good one for someone who knew someone in government. After all, that’s what the regulations are there for.