Want a multimillion PPE payout from the government? Apparently, all you have to do is befriend a Tory MP

This year, more than any other, it’s been vital to look after our friends and families. That’s why it’s so touching that the government has done exactly that, by awarding hundreds of millions of pounds’ worth of contracts to their friends and families through the pandemic.

A report from the National Audit Office is one loving cry of generosity. There’s the firm called Randox that received £479m in government contracts for Covid testing, and pays Conservative MP Owen Patterson £100,000 a year as a consultant.

A cynic might suggest they pay him because his position as an MP gives them a route to government contracts. But it’s more likely it’s for his expertise on viruses. At the interview, he must have said: “I have over 40 years’ experience of coughing, and have had as many as 17 colds”, so they offered him £100,000 a year.

Dominic Cummings’ father-in-law Humphrey Wakefield is an associate of the director of Admiral Public Relations, which received a £670,000 contract.

The family connection is justified because Cummings is the perfect person to advise on public relations. His public image all year has been flawless, and one of the main reasons why the public obeys lockdown rules without question, so that’s £670,000 well spent.

Health minister Edward Argar is a former senior executive at Serco, the company in charge of much of the track and tracing. They’ve missed so many hundreds of thousand people, their method for finding people must be to stand in the street with their eyes closed, counting to 40, then shouting “Coming – ready or not.”

So it’s our fault their system doesn’t work. We should help them by shouting “Warmer, you’re getting warmer, no, you’re getting colder again”, until eventually, we come out of our house saying “HERE I am. You didn’t trace me but never mind, you tried really hard. And I only infected 11 more people in my office!” and giving them a packet of Haribos.

The boss of Serco is Rupert Soames, brother of ex-Tory MP Nicholas Soames, which proves these contracts are fair. Because Rupert Soames is a Remainer, the money has been spread around between different sections of the Conservative Party, not just kept to one part of it, the way it would if the system was corrupt in any way.

There’s the £840,000 consultancy fee paid to Public First, for “focus group research”, whose two directors used to work for Michael Gove. Rachel Wolf, wife of Public First’s founding partner, James Frayne, co-authored the Conservative manifesto.

Maybe they should be given another £840,000 to show this report to focus groups to see how many people agree with the phrase “Michael Gove’s a greedy oily bastard”.

The report goes on and on like this, until you expect to see Terry who fixes gutters with his mate was awarded a £70m contract to provide PPE, finding out that it’s just a coincidence he’s Priti Patel’s brother-in-law.

In that scenario, the government could issue a statement that it’s “delighted with his services, because he only provided five gowns, but cleared away any leaves that had built up in the sleeves.”

We’ll discover that Stephanie, a yogic guru given £50m to contact the spirit of the virus who asked it to stay away from any restaurant that took up the Eat Out to Help Out scheme, is Jacob Rees-Mogg’s nanny.

And Nobby, who runs a garden centre in Salisbury and was paid £95m to provide a cactus to Public First to help with their Focus Group research, will turn out to be one of the voices in Grant Shapps’s head.

At least we’ve saved some money though. Because some of these contracts would have gone to Boris Johnson’s kids if he knew where they were.

The report also revealed how a contract for £250m to provide PPE was awarded to Saiger, a Miami jewellery designer. That seems natural, because the first place any of us go if we’re in need of a gown and a mask, is a Miami jewellery designer.

The director of a UK company that makes protective gowns and masks said yesterday on the BBC that when our hospitals were short of the protective equipment, their company was taking orders from every government except the British one, who wouldn’t answer their calls.

Now we know why, because they were holding out for a real expert – a Miami jewellery designer. It’s no good nurses staying alive if their protective equipment doesn’t look stylish. Imagine if they suddenly had to appear in a hip-hop video while giving a patient a bed bath?

The consultant who brokered this deal was himself paid £21m, but that was an investment because at least we won’t have to give him universal credit.

Another contract for protective equipment, for £350m, went to PestFix, a pest control firm with £18,000 of assets.

This is a delightfully imaginative way of buying things. If a government minister wants to buy a packet of cheese, they probably go to a scrap metal yard.

Still, the gowns arrived, and I expect they were all the more fun for looking exactly like mouse-trap.  

The report said: “Due diligence checks were not always completed on suppliers before the award of contracts.” Luckily they did seem to complete the most important checks, asking “Is this company related to anyone in the government?” And if they weren’t, they didn’t get the job.

Hopefully there will be a John Lewis advert, in which Baroness Dido Harding can’t track and trace her own house, so won’t be home for Christmas. The tear-jerker moment will arrive when she’s awarded a £20m contract for staring blankly into the middle distance, so she’s able to buy another one where she is. And at that point, our little hearts will melt.