The Scottish public body that procured PPE during the pandemic acted fairly and appropriately when awarding contracts, according to Audit Scotland.
A report by the public spending watchdog found that NHS National Services Scotland (NSS) used emergency procurement provisions to award PPE contracts without competition during the first wave of Covid-19.
It said there was some variation in the contracts, but auditors were satisfied with the procurement arrangements.
No evidence of preferential treatment or bias was found in the awarding of contracts.
However, Audit Scotland said award notices were not published within the required timescales for most of the PPE contracts, reducing the transparency of decision making.
READ MORE: A&E waiting times fall again to worst on record, latest figures reveal
The report concludes that NHS NSS worked well with national enterprise agencies and other partners to increase the amount of PPE produced in Scotland, making the supply chain more resilient.
It set up and runs the Test and Protect programme.
It also built and decommissioned the NHS Louisa Jordan field hospital at a cost of £51.2 million, and it continues to work well to support the vaccination programme.
Stephen Boyle, Auditor General for Scotland, said: “NHS NSS has been integral to Scotland's response to the pandemic, and it had to procure PPE in very difficult circumstances.
"Staff were working under extreme pressure and did not have time to follow standard procurement processes.
"But they did a good job of managing the risks of awarding contracts under emergency arrangements to ensure PPE was secured for front-line staff."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel