Watch session 7 (Wednesday 19 May) again: A striking feature of the government’s pandemic response has been contracting out Covid related services to private companies. This has been without the usual tendering processes and any transparency around contract details including costs. Despite a number of contracts failing spectacularly (e.g. NHS Test and Trace) and some pre-Covid contracts such as NHS Logistics being exposed as wholly inadequate, public contract funding has been differentially awarded to Conservative party donors and close contacts. In this session, we heard about the reliance on and scale of private contracts during the pandemic, and the level of pre-pandemic outsourcing and privatisation and asking, how did this contribute to the failures in response?  


Witnesses: David McCoy, Professor of Global Health Medicine, Institute of Population Health Sciences, QMUL; Centre for Health and the Public Interest, Dr David Wrigley,  GP in Carnforth, North Lancs, Deputy Chair BMA, co-author ‘NHS for Sale’ and ‘NHS SOS, Rosa Curling, Lawyer, co-founder of Foxglove campaigning against misuse of digital data & technology; formerly of Leigh Day Solicitors, Dr Michelle Dawson, NHS Consultant Anaesthetist, trustee Healthcare Workers’ Foundation charity (previously ‘Heroes’)