Covid-19: Contracts and Public Inquiry — House of Commons, 2021-07-07
Topic: Health
Andrew Campbell Bowie (Conservative, Centre-right): It is a pleasure to rise to speak in the debate this afternoon. I shall start by wishing all my English constituents, my English staff and even my English colleagues the best of luck in this evening’s semi-final. I do hope that England are successful in bringing football home to the island on which the modern game of football was created. Of course, like all the best things in the modern world, the modern game of football was invented in Scotland. Maybe next time, in Qatar in 2022, we will see the World cup going home to its real home at Hampden Park in Glasgow Since my election in 2017, I have become well used to the SNP’s tactic in Opposition day debates of mixing rank opportunism with righteous indignation and manufactured grievance. But today, we have seen the gall and the sheer brass neck of the Scottish National party. It takes some beating for the party in government in Scotland, the party responsible for public health north of the border, to come here to this place and put forward a motion on, of all things, covid-19 in the week when Scotland was declared by the World Health Organisation to have six of the top 10 covid hotspots in Europe I was now going to launch into a few well-constructed jokes about the Cabinet Secretary for Health disapparating, grabbing his invisibility cloak and using the Floo Network to get to the Harry Potter Studios in Watford. However—I mean this sincerely—everybody at all levels of all the Governments in the United Kingdom has been under immense pressure over the past year and a half, and who can begrudge any Minister in any position of responsibility taking some time to spend with their family, who have borne the brunt of the pressure they have been under? So I will refrain from attacking the Cabinet Secretary for Health, and I hope he enjoys the precious time he gets to spend with his children over the next few days This is not a laughing matter. Scotland is already leading the continent in terms of drugs deaths, but we are now leading it in terms of covid cases contracted, and this is putting at real risk Scotland’s own freedom day on 9 August. This is under a party whose leader claimed that the strategy north of the border was to eradicate covid. That would be incredible; we would be the first country in the world to do it. The SNP seems to be having about as much success in achieving that aim as it does in improving educational standards in schools, meeting the R100 broadband roll-out deadline, establishing Welfare Scotland or developing a new farm payments system. No wonder it scrapped the Scottish Qualifications Authority, for if there was an examination in good government, the Scottish National party would get a "must try harder" and a big F The reverse Midas touch of the SNP is quite incredible to behold, but this is incredibly serious. We have heard Scottish National party Members talking this afternoon about test and trace. They call it the failing test and trace, but I think it is a world-leading test and trace system. Let us compare it to how test and protect is operating north of the border. Test and protect is operating at its slowest-ever rate, and in the week ending 27 June, only 29% of positive individuals were interviewed within 24 hours of appearing on the case management system. If we are to escape from these awful restrictions that everybody on these islands is living under, we must have a functioning test and trace system. Again, the SNP must try harder It is true that vaccination in Scotland for covid-19 continues apace, even if the roll-out has slowed in recent weeks, and we are of course forever grateful to our amazing NHS workers—in my case, in NHS Grampian—and to the volunteers and the armed forces for their tireless efforts and the speed at which they are building the wall of protection that will get us back to normal. But there is a certain irony that the one part of the covid response that is working well in Scotland at the minute is the part that is solely as a result of Scotland being part of our United Kingdom. It is because this UK Government took the decisions they did, moved at the pace they did and invested what and when they did that we are leading the world in terms of vaccination, allowing us to dream of a day when masks are something we save for guising at Halloween and when we need never again use that awful term "social distancing". Not that we would know any of that from a party that is reluctant even to use the full name of our world-leading Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, should it in some way indicate that the people of Scotland are benefiting from our working together as one United Kingdom I could accept all that. After more than 10 years of being in Scottish politics at some level or another, I would expect all of that from a party for whom taking responsibility is anathema—indeed, I have concluded that the Scottish National party wants to take Scotland back into the EU only because, without Westminster, it needs somebody else to point the finger of blame at for its mistakes—but this motion really takes the biscuit. It takes the hypocrisy that we are so used to from the Government in Edinburgh to whole new levels—and, for me, whole new levels of incredulity For a party that refuses to deliver on a manifesto commitment to hold a public inquiry into covid in Scotland to come down here and call for a covid inquiry in this place, and for a party that wants to see an end to the UK, and that uses every single opportunity afforded to it to emphasise the differences between our two nations to seek to break up this country, suddenly to suggest that it would be untoward or improper for the Scottish Government to hold their own inquiry before the UK Government did the same, is quite a change of tack, particularly when that party usually grabs any chance to show that it is leading the United Kingdom or moving faster in some way That party has also come here today to complain about the process for issuing emergency covid-19 contracts. As has been said, this country, along with every country and every Government in the world, was dealing with an unprecedented situation a year and a half ago. We were moving heaven and earth to protect the British people the length and breadth of our country. We know that Governments moved faster to try to protect people, because the Scottish Government did exactly the same thing. They awarded over a billion pounds in covid contracts without tender and with no competitive process, including, but not exclusively, for call centres, PPE, housing and care contracts, IT support, hand sanitiser and consultancy work It is astounding to hear SNP Members complain that MPs came to this place and represented to the Government companies, organisations and individuals in their constituencies who had ideas, mechanisms or inventions that could ease the pressure on the NHS and save lives. Surely Members of Parliament are supposed to represent businesses and individuals in our constituencies who could help in a crisis. That is certainly what I did when an individual caught me at a rather inopportune moment. I happened to be giving blood at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary in Foresterhill when a constituent recognised me from across the room and started telling me all about his great idea for a new ventilation system. He had me tied to the spot, I am afraid, and I was all ears. I went on to represent his company and his ideas to Ministers. I have no idea whether his idea or invention was successful, but I know that I did what I should have done and took that idea to the people who could make a difference, so that it could save lives in this United Kingdom Goodness me, was I quite amazed to hear SNP Members raising the use of private emails to conduct Government business? That from the Scottish National party, whose leader’s office last year advised people that the First Minister would use only her party email address and that urgent matters should be sent only to her private SNP account, not her Government account. That from the Scottish National party, whose Ministers now seem to communicate exclusively by Signal and whose use of public money to further their own political ends is blatant and routine The time for inquiries will come. There will undoubtedly be questions for senior members of both Governments, who were thrust into an impossible and unprecedented situation and urged to act quickly and urgently for the public good. However, this House, and indeed this country, should have no truck with, and should take no lectures in good government from, a party that is failing Scotland and failing the Scottish people and whose arrogance in power grows by the day. There is less than five years until the next Scottish election. For the sake of my country, it cannot come a day too soon.