A former minister behind the controversial VIP lane for supplying personal protective equipment during the pandemic has said “some crooks” were probably awarded contracts, but defended the scheme as necessary to plug shortages.
Lord Agnew, who was a Cabinet Office minister responsible for procurement during the pandemic, accused the Covid inquiry of having a “misconceived obsession with the high-priority lane”.
In a robust evidence session at the inquiry on Tuesday, Agnew said it was “bollocks” to suggest that the VIP lane, which fast-tracked contracts to suppliers with links to ministers, was “some kind of plan by rightwing people trying to enrich themselves”.
In response to Anna Morris KC, the counsel to the Covid bereaved families, Agnew said: “There was no heinous plan to enrich a few of our mates. It is such bollocks. We were in the most terrible position. There was no doubt one or two crooks and cranks, but they were largely credible, which is borne out in the volume of stuff that they ended up delivering.”
Earlier Agnew cited the Conservative peer Michelle Mone, who will be giving evidence to the inquiry in private about a multimillion-pound PPE contract secured through the VIP lane that she was linked to.
Agnew said: “Yes, we got plenty of stuff wrong. Yes, probably some crooks came through the VIP lane. Yes, we’ve got this Baroness Mone woman who perhaps you are going to ask me about.”
Richard Wald KC, told Agnew he would not be asked about Mone. Agnew replied: “That’s a relief because the NCA [National Crime Agency] will deal with her.”
Agnew added: “I really struggle to understand why this [the VIP lane] is such a point of obsession. We really had nothing, so if there were credible people out there who could help, then we should go with them.”
Lady Hallett, the chair of the inquiry, defended the inquiry’s question about the VIP lane. “It doesn’t indicate an obsession. It certainly doesn’t indicate any view on my part. The questions are designed just to explore an area of public concern,” she said.
Agnew acknowledged he was “the godparent” of the VIP lane. He compared it to the role Lord Beaverbrook played as armaments minister during the second world war when the Spitfires he had helped to build contributed to winning the Battle of Britain.
He said: “In your world, you wouldn’t have had a rogue like Lord Beaverbrook doing something like that. He was a philanderer, he was a bully, he was an egotist. But if he hadn’t done what he’d done, we would possibly have lost that battle.”
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Agnew was also asked why he was hesitant about following the advice of Gareth Rhys Williams, the Cabinet Office’s chief commercial officer, to remove James Dyson’s firm from a government scheme to supply ventilators. Wald said Agnew seemed to be giving Dyson “special treatment”.
Agnew said: “[Dyson] was throwing a level of R&D at it that dwarfed anybody else. I know you think he’s been given some favouritism here, maybe we have, but the rate of which he was pushing his own development gave me that reassurance.”
He added: “I don’t think it was a mistake to keep Dyson in play until we got to the point at which we knew his machines couldn’t work.”
Agnew said that telling Dyson that his ventilators would not be selected was the “hardest phone call I’ve made in my professional life”. He added: “He spent 20 million quid of his own money. How many other people did that during Covid?”
The fifth module of the inquiry on pandemic procurement continues.
