> According to a report published by the National Audit Office, just over 1 percent of COVID-19 contracts worth $24bn awarded to suppliers between March and July last year, were awarded using a competitive process.
So when death rates were rising exponentially and the world was trying to make sense of covid, it's a bad thing that regulatory red tape was cut? I personally would like to see a crackdown of corruption in UK politics, but this seems like a really weak argument.
The problem is more who they were awarded to rather than the process. Having a “VIP lane” for friends, family, and donors is about as corrupt as it gets.
The issue at hand is that the UK government (or at least some people within it) seems to have been happy to use this as a pretext for awarding huge procurement contracts to personal friends and donors without any oversight or transparency as to how these descisions were made. See for instance this politico story from today: https://www.politico.eu/article/conservative-uk-ppe-contract...
So when death rates were rising exponentially and the world was trying to make sense of covid, it's a bad thing that regulatory red tape was cut? I personally would like to see a crackdown of corruption in UK politics, but this seems like a really weak argument.