PPE suppliers now being vetted by UK's intelligence agencies

PPE suppliers are being vetted by the intelligence agencies, officials have said, as they reveal the Government is now suing multiple companies.

Alex Chisholm, permanent secretary at the Cabinet Office, said the names of firms offering to sell equipment, such as masks and surgical gowns, are now being run through intelligence databases to guard against fraudsters.

It follows a number of reports that shipments of vital PPE turned out to be defective.

Last month, a major report by the National Audit Office branded the bureaucratic effort to ramp up supply “chaotic”.

Giving evidence to the Public Accounts Committee, Mr Chisholm said officials had accessed the police national database “several hundreds, even thousands of times” over concerns about potential suppliers.

Asked what support he had to guard against international criminal suppliers, he said: “I can confirm we’ve worked closely with intelligence agencies on that matter.”

He also told the committee that the Government was taking legal action against at least two companies relating to the performance of communications contracts related to the PPE effort.

Meanwhile, it emerged that millions of medical gowns bought by the Government from a firm linked to a Tory peer have never been used by the NHS.

Ministers agreed in June to pay £122 million to PPE Medpro, a firm set up only 44 days earlier, to procure around 20 million gowns from factories in China.

However, a BBC investigation found the gear has never been used on the frontline.

The contract was awarded without competition due to the urgency of the pandemic, with hospitals running out of gowns and health workers falling ill. The Government has previously admitted that the pandemic stockpile of PPE did not include surgical gowns.

The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) told the BBC that officials had needed to seek approval from the health regulator, the MHRA, for the PPE Medpro gear to be used in the NHS.

The company was set up in May by Anthony Page, on the same day that he left a role at a firm managing the “brand” of Baroness Mone of Mayfair, the former lingerie tycoon.

Mr Page also holds a senior role at the finance firm Knox Group, founded by Baroness Mone’s husband Doug Barrowman.

Baroness Mone has previously insisted that she holds “no role or involvement” with PPE Medpro, while Mr Barrowman has said he is “not involved” with the company as director or shareholder.

The Government is understood to have built up a stockpile of around 70 million gowns since the first lockdown. Around 10 million gowns have been used by the NHS in total during the pandemic.

PPE Medpro said it had delivered 100 per cent of the gowns ordered, in accordance with the “agreed specifications”.

"We did so in very challenging circumstances earlier this year and are very pleased to have been able to assist DHSC fully and properly at a time of national crisis," a spokesman added.

A DHSC spokesman said: "The safety of front-line staff and patients is of paramount importance and we now have a four-month stockpile of all Covid-critical PPE in place.

"All PPE must undergo rigorous checks so they meet the safety and quality required.

"Proper due diligence is carried out for all government contracts and we take these checks extremely seriously."