By Ben Kerrigan-
Matt Hancock has defended an allegation that the British government paid too much money in deals made to companies in an effort to combat the coronavirus.
The Health Secretary was responding to a Sunday Times report which said that the Government had awarded £1.5 billion to companies linked to the Conservative party during the pandemic. Since the onset of lockdowns in the Uk, many private companies are believed to have tremendously benefited financially in the bid to combat the virus.
Public companies and businesses have also been provided with much needed assistance to help them cope with the effects of the pandemic.
However, mr.Hancock suggested the story was an unfair and inaccurate reflection of the awarding of the contracts. The Health Secretary said that the government “had to” work with the private sector in its work tackling the virus.
He described the Covid-19 testing programme to “building something that’s basically about the same size of Tesco in six months”.
He told Times Radio: “We’ve brought in an extraordinary broad range of companies and many of them who haven’t been working with Government before because we haven’t had a pandemic of this scale before.
“So think about the testing capacity. It’s nothing to do with any political links, it’s all about building a massive testing capacity in this country that we haven’t had in the past.
“And the need to do that at pace and build this half a million testing capacity that we have today. We built that almost from scratch.
In this pandemic we’ve completely put aside politics, it’s all about what can we do to keep people safe and get the country back on its feet
“So the scale of the operation – building something that’s basically about the same size of Tesco in six months – has been incredible. So we absolutely have had to work with the private sector to have this happen.
“We’ve been doing that as quickly and as effectively as we possibly could in what were very, very challenging circumstances.
“In this pandemic we’ve completely put aside politics, it’s all about what can we do to keep people safe and get the country back on its feet.”
Mr Hancock added: “We’ve worked with an unbelievable range of companies.
“And if you note down all the ones where there were previous contacts and don’t note down all the ones where there weren’t then of course you can give that sort of impression but it’s not a fair or accurate reflection of what went on.”