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Former Conservative Health Secretary Matt Hancock used his personal email account to help secure a multi-million pound Covid contract for a ‘VIP’ supplier, which was awarded by officials on the very same day, correspondence released to Byline Times reveal.
Hancock’s private referral for the biotech firm Excalibur Healthcare, which was revealed via a Freedom of Information request by Byline Times, came despite repeated denials by the last Government that personal emails were ever used by ministers for official business.
Excalibur, which provided the NHS with tens of millions of pounds worth of unusable equipment during the pandemic, later folded, owing over £22 million to DHSC.
The newly-released correspondence reveals that Hancock had received an email from Excalibur’s boss, Sir Christopher Evans, on 8 April 2020 offering to sell the UK Government millions of face masks. In his email, Evans pleads with Hancock to help seal the contract.
“Feel these are important. Make the public aware yourself you invested in them and start handing them out tonight Mat!!”, Evans wrote.
Within two hours of receiving the email, Matt Hancock forwarded the offer onto Jonathan Marron, the Director General at the Department for Health and Social Care, stating “Do we want to act on this? I will leave it with you”. The email from Hancock was sent using his personal email account and Excalibur were subsequently placed into the VIP lane.
DHSC officials have confirmed that Hancock was the “source of referral” for Excalibur onto the VIP lane – a system that fast tracked offers from politically-connected companies, many of whom had never previously supplied PPE to the NHS.
Excalibur’s lobbying appears to have been effective, and remarkably on the same day of the email exchange, the company received a £25 million PPE contract to supply facemasks – a deal that was awarded without any formal competitive tendering process.
During the pandemic No.10 repeatedly denied that ministers including Hancock were using personal email accounts for government business. They claimed ministers “understand the rules around personal email usage and only ever conducted government business through their departmental email addresses”. We now know this wasn’t true.
The Government’s dealings with the company were hugely costly for the taxpayer. An investigation by Spotlight on Corruption in 2023, revealed that Excalibur had provided 4.4 million items of unusable PPE to the Government, valued at over £20 million.
Excalibur’s face mask contract wasn’t the only one involving the Hancock-led DHSC. A Good Law Project Investigation previously revealed that Excalibur also secured a £135 million contract to supply 2,700 ventilators in April 2020. .
Remarkably none of the 2,7000 ventilators were used and eventually the Government decided to auction the machines off on the cheap.
Excalibur’s ventilators were passed on for quickfire sales to British Medical Auctions, and dozens were listed on the company’s site. Units which originally cost the taxpayer circa £50,000 each – appeared with bids starting at £100 – generating an eye-watering loss.
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Matt Hancock confirmed in his witness statement to the Covid Inquiry that he also “discussed ventilators” as well as PPE with Excalibur Healthcare’s boss Sir Christopher Evans.
“Government held on to these ventilators for four years before selling them for peanuts”, said Executive Director of Good Law Project, Jo Maugham.
The Department of Health and Social Care said the Government “identified and secured life-saving equipment at a time when there was huge global demand”.
“We are now taking action to save taxpayers’ money on storage costs by reducing the stockpiles of ICU equipment which are no longer necessary,
Excalibur could not be reached for comment.