CASH-for-access North Shropshire MP Owen Paterson has been forced to step down from his constituency role, after Boris Johnson backpedalled on his decision to undermine existing anti-sleaze regulations.

Multiple MPs and the public are now demanding answers after it was discovered £480 million worth of unadvertised Covid testing contracts had been awarded to Randox Laboratories, a firm Paterson worked for as a paid, part-time consultant.  

The Tories’ decision to award the contract was made despite Randox’s prior mismanagement of a £347m arrangement for Covid testing, which left care homes with zero capacity to test, due to the recall of 750,000 defective kits. 

Johnson’s Cabinet is mired in sleaze, with the PM also facing scrutiny over the financing of the refurbishment of his Downing Street residence.

But Tory conflicts of interest don’t end with Paterson or Wallpapergate — £17 billion worth of Covid contracts have been awarded by the Conservatives during the crisis, and many raise serious question marks as to the appropriateness of their allocation.

A recent report from non-profit Transparency International UK reveals that at least £3.7bn worth of contracts awarded by the British government display “at least one red flag for possible corruption.”

The watchdog states the Tories appeared to “favour those with political access” when deciding how to award lucrative pandemic-related contracts, including those for supplying essential PPE.

Since the pandemic’s commencement there have been a number of causes for alarm over Covid-related decisions made by the government — from the Test and Trace head appointment of inexperienced Dido Harding, married to a Tory MP, to the government’s Vaccine Task Force chair Kate Bingham’s decision to hire Dominic Cumming’s-linked firm Admiral PR to perform civil servants’ work.

Bingham is also alleged to have disclosed confidential information regarding what vaccines the government was reviewing, to a private equity investors’ conference in the US . 

The conflicts of interest keep on coming — Sir Patrick Vallance, head of the government’s expert advisory panel on vaccines, holds £600,000 worth of shares in GlaxoSmithKline, while scandal-hit Matt Hancock awarded a coveted NHS contract to PHL Group, whose executive director is the brother of his mistress, Gina Coladangelo. 

Hancock has previously come under fire for awarding a £30m contract for Covid testing vials to his former neighbour, who has no prior experience manufacturing medical grade equipment.

Liz Truss-linked firm Ayanda Capital received £252m to provide 200 million FFP2 masks to the NHS, but the company failed to fulfil their contractual obligations, as many of the face masks supplied by the firm lacked sufficient fixings.

Then there’s Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, Michael Gove — in June, the High Court ruled he commissioned £560,000 worth of Covid communications work without due process, from market research firm Public First, whose founders are friends with Cummings.

On top of this, The Good Law Project has uncovered over £4.4bn worth of public money that remains unaccounted for, awarded as contract funds during the government’s Covid response.

Though a 2015 emergency provision allows the government to skip the competitive tendering phase and award contracts directly to a preferred supplier in cases of “extreme urgency,” legally they are still required to publish the details of all contracts over £10,000, including those directly awarded.

The level of scrutiny the incumbent government has faced so far has been woefully insufficient, given that it is tasked with crucial pandemic-related decisions that will drastically affect society — and public health. 

The Vaccine Passport scheme is one critical case in point — although Health Secretary Sajid Javid has announced that passports have been ruled out, the Tories have retained them as an option in their Plan B response, should the NHS fall under pressure this winter.

The Conservatives have been underfunding the health service for years — a major reason the NHS is struggling in the first place — and passports have the potential to widen health inequality and seriously affect marginal and poorer communities.  

Yet the government has already signed contracts worth more than £75m for the scheme, with little to no scrutiny as to who the arrangements have been made with — and why.

Eyebrows have already been raised over one of the firms the government has chosen — Entrust ID — which has boasted about the ability to redeploy health passports into national ID schemes and has helped establish digital ID systems in Malaysia, Albania, and Ghana.

This government has so far displayed a serious lack of transparency. If it does implement health passports, it should be clear who stands to benefit.

There must be proper evaluation as to whether the decision is being made for reasons of public health or corporate profit — and if the scheme is necessary, can the Tories be trusted to oversee it?

Deputy Labour leader Angela Rayner has now written to Cabinet Secretary Simon Case, demanding full details of the Paterson affair — but Tory Covid corruption doesn’t stop with one MP.

The conflicts of interests that have surfaced so far are likely just the tip of the iceberg. The public now deserves an official investigation into the full scale of cronyism involved in the government’s pandemic response.

This is pivotal if we are to ascertain whether the Tories have made crucial health decisions in the public’s interest — or if they have instead acted with negligence, awarding prestigious contracts to cronies and tailoring their pandemic response to cater to profit, not the interests of the public.