In a damning report, the House of Commons public accounts committee (PAC) concluded that the government had made a series of failings, making it impossible to know whether the contracts had been properly awarded to Randox. The Department of Health and Social Care did little to address potential conflicts of interest despite “clear concerns” about Randox’s political connections, the cross-party committee of MPs found. He added that officials knew Patterson had direct contact with Matt Hancock, who was then health secretary, while promoting Ruddox. MPs found that Randox made “significant” profits after being awarded contracts to carry out Covid tests during the pandemic. The company’s profits in the year to June 2021 were “more than 100 times larger” than the previous year, according to the PAC, which questioned whether they were exaggerated. In its latest accounts, Randox reported a profit of £177m for the year to 30 June 2021. MPs said this compared to a profit of £1.2m reported by Randox for the 18 months to 30 June 2020. A spokesman for Randox accused the PAC report of being “deeply flawed and wrong in the assumptions it makes and the conclusions it draws” and added that the company had lodged a legal complaint. He said: “At no stage, either during its deliberations or in the preparation of this report, did the PAC have any contact with Randox. Consequently, many elements of her report relating to Randox are false, being based on incorrect and unverified assumptions about the company.” A company spokesperson previously said Randox contracts were awarded in full compliance with government procedures and protocols in place during a time of the emerging pandemic. The PAC also concluded that the health department did not keep proper records of why it gave the contracts to Randox, nor what happened when ministers met with the company. The department has been approached for comment. The publication of the report comes after Ruddox and Patterson were accused of charity in parliamentary debates. Randox paid Paterson, then MP for North Shropshire, £100,000 a year. The former cabinet minister was forced to resign from parliament last November after he misused his parliamentary position to lobby for his clients, including Radox. Evidence of his lobbying was first revealed by the Guardian. The Lib Dems won the next primary and the lobbying saga – including Boris Johnson’s attempts to force his MPs to change the rules to protect Paterson – contributed to anger within the party and among voters, which ultimately led to the fall of the Prime Minister this month. Between 2010 and 2018, Randox donated £160,000 to the Conservative party. During the pandemic, Paterson lobbied Hancock directly on behalf of Randox. After Paterson’s lobbying, Hancock hounded his officials, saying he was “very concerned” about how his department was treating Randox and other companies. The PAC concluded that the department “sad [and] Poor record keeping means we cannot be sure that all these contracts were awarded correctly. Even considering the exceptional circumstances at the start of the pandemic, basic public service practices for documenting contract decision-making were not followed.” He said the health department neglected to consider apparent conflicts of interest in awarding the contracts, even though officials were aware of Patterson’s contacts with Hancock. Between January and October 2020, Paterson and Hancock exchanged messages eight times via private email or WhatsApp while the MP promoted Randox. Hancock said he did nothing wrong. Deputies said officials were also aware that Hancock had been hosted by Radox in 2019 when he stayed overnight at a country estate owned by the company chief. Hancock said he doesn’t need to publicly state that hospitality. The health ministry has also been criticized for failing to follow the ground rule on publicly declaring meetings between ministers and outside companies. Only four of the eight meetings between Randox and health ministers were properly publicized. Records were kept of what was said at only two of these meetings. At the start of the Covid pandemic, in March 2020, the health department awarded the first contract, worth £133m, to Randox without allowing other companies to bid. The government had suspended normal rules for awarding contracts as the pandemic was deemed an emergency. The PAC said the award of this contract did not receive “the scrutiny we would expect from senior civil servants in the department. The role of departmental ministers in approving the contract was also confused and unclear.” MPs added: “Randox struggled to deliver the expected level of testing capability against its first contract, which did not specify any performance measures. However, the department still awarded Randox a £328m contract extension seven months later, again without a tender.’ Meg Hillier, chair of the PAC, said: “We hear time and again the reference to the crisis we have faced as a nation. But acting fast doesn’t mean acting fast and loose.” He added that “much of the business was won without competitive bidding from companies that may have had a better ability to deliver”, pointing out that Randox had also received money to pay for equipment to carry out the tests. A Hancock spokesman said: “Randox was the largest testing provider in the UK. Not to work with them during this unprecedented global pandemic would be a dereliction of duty.”
