organisers of this summer's tokyo olympics and parlympics say no international fans will be allowed because of concerns over the coronavirus pandemic. now on bbc news... as the government faces mounting criticism that well—connected people made millions out of britain's ppe crisis, panorama investigates who won out. tonight on panorama: the gold rush, as britain's health workers ran short of ppe... we were so scared of this virus. if there was no ppe then what? £12.5 billion worth of contracts were awarded, some to people with friends in high places. you were ten times more likely to be awarded a contract if you had been in that high priority lane than if you hadn't. big profits were there to be made. that's an awful lot of money. yeah, it's a very large contract. we reveal the dog food supplier who took a cut of one of the biggest deals of all... every person that feeds rockster to their dog becomes part of our family. ..and ask why even now the government is keeping secret, crucial details about how the money was spent. this is really troubling stuff. it signals something very alarming about the state of our country. in the spring of 2020, ppe stocks were falling. covid deaths were rising. the uk government was on a massive exercise to find ppe anywhere in the world. these were unprecedented days. order after million—pound order came flooding into ports like felixstowe. the uk was spending hundreds of millions of pounds on personal protective equipment. absolute chaos to start with. frustrating, a bit like the wild west. gold rush is how i would compare it, you've seen those crazy movies. martin dubbey could see what was happening to the market from the inside. a former senior police and customs officer, his job was to stop companies he worked for being scammed. everyone was trying to flood out to the market and capture an angle on the supply to say that they had available products to get to the uk. and many people were doing it well intentioned. there were many people outrightjust seeing it as an opportunity to make a profit. some ppe prices had been driven up by more than 1000% injust three months. i investigated the shortage of personal protective equipment last year. panorama found the government had failed to buy enough gowns, visors, swabs and masks. aprons made from bin bags, plastic bags on heads, swimming goggles and other home—supplied eye protection. the government insists it never actually ran out of ppe. the national spending watchdog has been through the books and says we weren't ready for covid. there were some parts of that pandemic stockpile that hadn't been brought up to date. very quickly in march it became clear that that was going to be inadequate. it was clear that if hospitals couldn't be properly supplied then lives were going to be put at risk. so the stakes couldn't be higher. by february this year at least 180 health care workers had died after being exposed to covid while doing theirjob. they are coughing all over you and we would be, like, just praying to god, please, please i don't want this infection. we were so scared of this virus, we were reading news of our trusts not having masks, nurses using bin liners. at least i was not doing that. i used to wonder could that happen to me? and that was a very scary thought because if there was no ppe, then what? the desperate shortage meant the market was open to anyone who could supply. hi. it's richard from panorama. all right! in liverpool a charity worker who normally supports the homeless found himself dealing in ppe. we got a phone call from someone saying the northwest ambulance service need ppe. can you do anything to help? and at first i thought what can i actually do? cos i'm just not in that industry at all. why did they approach you do you think? i think they were desperate to be honest. dominic says he supplied to charities at cost, but other deals did make him money. he says he could easily have made more. approximately out of ppe how much have you benefitted? i'd say again less than a hundred grand. tell me what you think you could have made if you'd taken a different path? we could have potentially made millions and millions. some did make millions. we can take you inside one deal where that happened. it's become one of the most controversial the government signed and the man at the centre of it has agreed to talk to panorama. spring 2020. at the west london headquarters of his investment company, they get an unexpected offer. one of my long—standing contacts, someone i've known for 15 years, a chinese lady, contacted me and said, "look, we have a contract for 50 million of these ffp2 masks. would you be interested in buying them?" ayanda capital normally works in international finance and commerce. it had never supplied ppe before, but now it had access to desperately needed masks. that enabled it to win contracts worth £253 million. from our point of view were were able to step up and deliver at a time when clearly the nhs and public health england were not able to supply the product that was required. so it was sort of luck that you ended up with this contract? well, it was it was a very fortunate set of circumstances from our perspective but i think it was also fortunate from the country's perspective. and presumably from your point of view, you could make some money as well? yes, of course, yeah. how much profit did you make? we made about an 18% margin on the transaction. so that would be what? put it into a figure for us. er, that, what is that? that's about a0 million. so, just to be clear, you made £40 million profit out of this deal? yes, we made £40 million of profit. we made about an 18% margin on the deal. these are normal margins for a deal of this nature. so are you comfortable making a0 million on a deal to supply the nhs with things that it needs to get through a crisis? um, as i say, we made a typical margin for a transaction of that nature. i mean if you look at the margins made by most companies that sell to the nhs i think you will find that they are probably higher. mr horlick later told us his margin was in fact 15.8% and that his net profit after tax and expenses would be £17 million and ayanda delivered. more than 200 million masks were shipped to the uk. but other suppliers who had ppe ready to go say they were overlooked. rizwana hussain is based in bradford but manufactures in china. early in the pandemic her company switched to making ppe. we've got masks, sanitiser, we've got lateral flow test kits, these are type one medical masks so these would be used in an nhs environment. she was hoping to supply the nhs. so, this stuff sat in your warehouse? it was sitting in our china warehouse. and it was just a case of putting them on a flight really and getting them across. yes, we had the stock, at the drop of a hat. you could get the stuff in that britain needed? yeah, oh, yeah. rizwana emailed the government and eventually spoke to someone. when you get somebody over the phone you're able to really able to go to town. and you told them you had factories there? idid, yeah. you heard nothing back? and emailed and it went as far as maybe two emails and then being passed over to somebody else and then one conversation, two emails and you're passed over to somebody else and it was just like a constant carousel of being passed from pillar to post really. rizwana says it wasn't lost profits that concerned her, but the chance to help protect health workers on the front line. in the end she shipped in ppe for other buyers in the uk. some viewers might say maybe you are just frustrated because that would have been an awful lot of money, it would have been very good for business and you missed out. is that why you're upset? no, not at all, because we did actually manage to supply ppe to the uk market to very high—level industries, so we've done very well anyway. i felt vocal about this whole issue only when the sorts of people came to light that the government chose to deal with. industries that weren't connected or had nothing to do with this were starting to get the contracts. the government says officials made decisions based on price, quality, delivery date and full compliance checks. back in march last year ministers were trying to get to grips with a chaotic market. the government set up a covid task force that was overseen by the cabinet office. the aim was to bring together all efforts to buy ppe together under one roof. but it's been accused of wasting taxpayers? money and cronyism. the government had appealed to british business to help. it used emergency powers to avoid putting contracts out to tender so they could be signed quickly. normal competition rules were bypassed. about 10.5 billion we found had been spent without competition. so no competition? for that 10.5 billion no competition. what do you think about that? it wasn't a surprise that the government had been forced to suspend competition for some of these contracts because of the speed at which it was having to operate at the peak of the pandemic, particularly in march and april. it definitely raises risks for things that need to be managed. there were gaps in some documentation, so it wasn't always clear why a particular contact had been treated as extremely urgent and it wasn't clear why a particular supply had been chosen. many of those suppliers had never done ppe deals before. sabia mokeddem was 23. she was a trader in the city. she had a contact in hong kong who could supply surgical gowns. the government awarded her a £880,000 contract and gave her the money. how much did they give you up front? 440,000. so they gave you nearly half a million pounds before any products arrived ? exactly. what sort of checks were done on you? because from the government's point of view it's going to give you nearly £1 million. this is not your main job and you've only been going a few weeks. so how did they check you out? i have no idea about this, really. did they do any checks on you? i think they just went to companies house, i mean... the only check was companies house? because you were brand—new, you'd done virtually nothing. i did have to fill forms about the company, about myself, my address etcetera, but no specific checks about myself. sabia's gowns were delivered. she'd expected to make £20,000, but says her costs cancelled that out. the government says all suppliers were properly assessed. contacts in china were more important than previous experience in ppe. how some contracts were chosen is less transparent. that's led to questions of fairness. it wasn't always just about what you could deliver but about who you knew. politicians and officials had been told they could personally recommend companies who they thought could deliver ppe. these leads were then fed into a special email inbox at the covid task force. the email inbox that was to collect these bids was made available to the private offices of ministers, of mps, of peers and senior civil servants. so the idea was to use the government network in its wider sense to identify credible bidders. the government says it meant credible bids could be spotted earlier. if a supplier landed in that mailbox, it was given a higher priority. what was the likelihood of getting a contract if you were in the high priority lane? well, you were ten times more likely to be awarded a contract if you had been in that high priority lane than if you hadn't. our challenge is without clear criteria for how you were treated in this way, it raises all sort of concerns in the public mind about fairness, about transparency and why why this particular bid was picked over another apparently perfectly good bid. this lack of transparency has led to accusations that those with friends in high places were given an unfair advantage. 47 companies benefited from that priority lane. the national audit office has only named two. one of them is ayanda capital — the financial services company which signed deals for ppe worth £253 million. we have no idea whether we were referred or not referred to a high priority lane because we were not told one existed and to this day i haven't been told that. i've read about it in the papers. we benefited from being able to go to senior people in the nhs who were able to tell us you need to talk to the cabinet office and put your proposals in. ayanda was helped by this man, andrew mills. at the time he was an advisor to the government's board of trade. he made a call to a contact, a senior nhs official. and ayanda was in the fast lane. i knew he had a lot of experience dealing with the nhs. and i said "look, andrew, could you make a few calls and find out how the process works?" but you presumably went to him because he had contacts. absolutely, yes. and those contacts, they helped get you the deal... i went to him because he had a lot of experience of working with the nhs and he had some understanding of how the procurement process worked. but can you see how to a neutral observer why it looks like cronyism? you had the contacts that other people didn't. i think if it's presented like that, absolutely, it looks like that, yes. that was not the case at the time. we benefited from going to senior people in the nhs who were able to tell us, you need to talk to the cabinet office and put your proposals in. that to my mind is the extent of the benefit it provided. why we got the contract in my opinion is because we had 50 million masks available for immediate delivery, which were a high priority item. that's why we got the contract. the government won't tell us the name of the nhs official who recommended ayanda. so important questions about the deal won't go away. do we know who that was? i don't know who that was. should we know who that was? well, i think... i mean the point about clear documentation of all of these is the decision—making process needs to be transparently documented and it certainly needs to be available to be audited. we wanted to ask mr mills if he was paid for his role in the deal. we asked him for an interview. he declined. in a statement he said the charge of cronyism was baseless. he went on to say that the government had called for help from the private sector much as the call went out to private boat owners for the dunkirk evacuation, and he said companies like ayanda had risen to the occasion magnificently. he said if there was a fast track or vip lane, shouldn't we be proud of this initiative? what did you think when you found out about the high priority lane? 144 recommendations for the high priority lane came from ministerial offices. but we don't know who recommended who or why. that lack of transparency leaves big questions unanswered. could ministers have suggested contracts that eventually were given without competition for millions of pounds? well, i mean, we've got no evidence that ministers were involved in any of the decision—making processes around this. because you haven't got the evidence, they may well have done. we have it in some cases, but not in every case, and that's... it has to be comprehensive, and it has to be clearly documented. so in theory that lack of transparency that you've told us about that you worry about, that could protect the kind of cronyism, the kind of ministerial sources that everybody worries about? it could have gone on, couldn't it? well, because you can't prove otherwise, of course, you've got to say that's the case. we wanted to find out more. we'd noticed something intriguing about two big ppe deals worth more than a quarter of a billion pounds. an industry insider agreed to help panorama. anonymously. posing as someone trying to buy ppe, he rang the company, a big player called wordlink resources, based in hong kong. it mightjust be worth talking about some of those. on its website it mentioned a uk—based firm called life partners. through our uk representative, life partners, worldlink- successfully helped the department of health and social care with - sourcing critical supplies of ppe. so, who are life partners? the company was only was set up last may, and has a single director and shareholder. this woman. zoe ley. she has a background in finance and banking. she also owns a company called the rockster. it sells organic dog food. it's endorsed by prince michael of kent. it's been reported she once paid £3,000 to umpire a tennis match david cameron was playing in at a conservative party fundraiser. every customer and every person that feeds rockster to their dog becomes part of our family. so, what did zoe ley do to help worldlink get such an enormous deal? our anonymous businessman was told by worldlink she had been "a bridge" to the uk government. and for that, he was told, she received 30% of worldlink�*s profits on the deals — likely to be a seven—figure sum. we asked zoe ley�*s solicitors how she came to be a bridge to the government. they told us someone in the uk covid task force had reached out to her. something the government denies. her lawyers won't tell us how much commission she earned, only that she was paid less than 30% by worldlink. what we still don't know is who she dealt with in the government task force and whether her deals had been referred to the high priority lane by someone in power. the government has refused to tell us, but says the deals passed the procurement process and successfully provided gowns and goggles. almost all the companies that benefited from the preference lane remain unidentified. the government says releasing the information may have commercial implications. do you know who won those contracts? well, we have access to that information, yes, because we can access the department's records. but we don't know that. do you think we should know that? well, i think it would obviously aid transparency in this unusual situation. it would aid transparency if government release that information. but you can't do that? no. we put in a freedom of information request to the auditors, but they turned it down. it seems the government asked them not to reveal the information. they say to us... "having consulted with the cabinet office and department of health and social care, they have requested that we do not release this information, stating that it would have a detrimental impact on both suppliers and their own commercial operations." the nao said, "releasing the information would damage our working relationship with government and inhibit department's free and frank exchange of views and information with the nao." it is an absolutely remarkable state of affairs. it implies that government departments will refuse to allow themselves to be audited if they know that that process might lead to proper public transparency over their conduct. jolyon maugham is the founder of campaign group the good law project. they took the government to court over its failure to publish ppe contracts quickly enough, and they won. this is really troubling stuff. it signals something very alarming about the state of our country. that we're not allowed to know whether government ministers have enriched theirfriends in business. we asked the government for an interview. they declined, but said in a statement that... "british businesses stepped up in this country's hour of need," getting "billions of items of ppe to the front line at record speed". "civil servants have been working night and day" and put "stringent checks in place to guarantee quality, value for money and due diligence". all leads, no matter from what channel, went through "the same eight—stage assurance process". where once there was a shortage of ppe, now there is a surplus. but the government made some costly mistakes. some equipment still hasn't yet been used, including some of the masks supplied by ayanda. i've actually brought one here for you to have a look at. here's the actual mask itself. you'll see it's a very high quality product, and here is the packaging and the certification that goes along with it. the government had ordered masks with ear loops rather than more secure head straps. ayanda says it's not to blame. it embarrasses me that the government and the nhs and people with some... within the bureaucracy have chosen not to use perfectly good masks. they're safe, they've been certified as safe by the bsi, and in fact the government's own lawyers have written to us to confirm that these masks did not fail any test. the government says the vast majority of ayanda's masks are being used by nhs workers, and that only a small percentage of all ppe purchased has proved to be unfit for any purpose. the uk had to buy huge amounts of ppes at the height of a pandemic. the cost to the taxpayer has been enormous. the crucial figure here is that the incredibly high volumes that were bought in the pandemic would have cost 2.5 billion if bought at 2019 prices. because of the inflated prices this year, they cost 12.5 billion. so you can see that somebody somewhere has made a very large amount of money from these contracts. until we know who, there could be another cost — people's trust in government. we weren't in the club. i feel like we were just put by the wayside because those with the connections, those with the affiliations were the ones having the conversations. the uk bought its way out of the ppe crisis. but decisions about how billions were spent remain unexplained. good afternoon. it is dry out there for the vast majority. sunny for some and where we have the sunshine, it is pretty one. temperatures in the far north—east of england have hit 17 degrees or at least very close to it. you can see where we have had the best of the sunshine. a lot of cloud elsewhere. a frontal system in the north bringing some patchy rain across scotland. temperatures in 17 degrees and sunny places but normally 11 to 13 degrees. in the north, the front will push its way southwards. little rain on it, most places will stay dry. but behind the frontal system, we will see some clear skies developing. central scotland is getting quite close to freezing for example. tomorrow should be a somewhat sunny day for many. once this frontal system clears away. there will be some cloud around but it will be cooler than it is today stop ties ofjust ten or 11. elsewhere might get you 12 or 13 degrees. this is bbc news with the latest headlines. reaching a milestone — half of all adults in the uk have now had a first dose of a coronavirus vaccine. europe braces itself for a third wave of coronavirus infections, with fresh lockdowns in france and poland. protesters opposed to the lockdown gather in central in london to march to westminster. scotland yard says london remains in a health crisis and urge people to stay at home. organisers of this summer's tokyo olympics and parlympics say no international fans will be allowed because of concerns over the coronavirus pandemic. learning languages in lockdown — the boom in the number of people learning welsh notjust in the uk, but around the world.

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