@Kurtan, sorry, quoted wrong post.
If you follow the tweet back, that's Dan Carden (PAC) and it's dated 25 May 2021, after a lot of digging that resolves back to a one-day hearing, that never produced a report, and seems to have been ignored in the press as well, here's the transcript:
https://committees.parliament.uk/oralevidence/2235/default/
There were four witnesses on that day, starting with the angry one from your tweet:
Thomas Martin - ARCO Limited
They do in fact sell PPE, mostly of the bright yellow kind that you'll see on building sites and the like, although their main business seems to be protective footwear, they also have a bit of a line in respirators and masks, but most of that's sourced from other brands, and their own brand masks are clearly nowhere near spec.
They didn't have what was needed at the time, and at first glance they seem to be mostly retailers, so they likely fell at the first hurdle when someone Googled who they were, but in retrospect that might've been a mistake, luck of the draw though.
Sarah Stoute - Full Support Healthcare
Sold the thick end of £2bn and her main complaint seems to be that those were "orders" rather than "contracts".
I hardly think that counts as turning her away.
Iain Liddell - Uniserve
Q15 Our position was that we were contacted by the DHSC on Mothering Sunday 22 March last year initially to urgently move ventilators out of China into the UK. Prior to that, we had not spoken to the DHSC and we had not sold into Government. The guys who contacted us came from a commercial world and would have known Uniserve from that commercial world we are fairly well recognised for our services and our strengths in places like China. From that first call, we were able to urgently move ventilators by air freight into the UK.
So our initial contact with the DHSC was directly made by them to us. That led to them asking us if we could source for them some desperately required PPE, which was based on various different products and commodities. Initially, it was based on gowns and then gloves and masks. Right at the very beginning, we said to them, “We do not normally procure PPE, but we have a huge network of customers, vendors, manufacturers and factories throughout China that do”—we work in that sector and have done for a long time. We said that we would put the call out to them to try to locate the specific items that they were looking for.
Q16 Absolutely, we did not approach the Government, and absolutely we were not approached by any Government middlemen. The call came directly from the DHSC, directly to us.
So DHSC actively searching for PPE suppliers rather than handing contracts out to cronies, that's hardly turning them away either, is it?
Chris Wakeman - Bunzi
£167m contracts, his role there appears to answer questions about media reports about his company being placed back on an approved list by Lord Feldman, the reports were wrong, although LF did contact him and ask him to speak to the lead of the new PPE team.
Again, DHSC searching for PPE proactively, not turning it away.
Not looking good so far, is it?
www.theguardian.com
kpmg.com
