THE SNP has described the Conservative Government as "sleekit" with "endemic cronyism" during the pandemic.
Ian Blackford, the party's Westminster leader, was speaking at the start of the party's opposition day debate on emergency coronavirus contracts and the EU settlement scheme.
Mr Blackford, MP for Ross, Skye and Lochaber, said: "The pandemic has led to opportunism, for greed and for Covid profits above accountability, because this Tory Government is guilty of funnelling Covid cash from the frontline into the pockets of its rich friends.
“We are talking about endemic cronyism during a global pandemic. The misuse of funds, Covid profiteers raking in billions of pounds for services which have often been too sub standard or irrelevant to the fight against this virus.”
He added: “Billions of pounds whilst millions in our society have been excluded from any help from this Government. The SNP is saying today enough. No more dodgy dealings, no more undeclared meetings, no more billion-pound contracts to friends. The Prime Minister promised an inquiry into the UK Government’s handling of the pandemic, it must start right now.”
He accused the Conservative Government of being “asleep at the wheel” over the Delta variant, adding: “For the UK Government to funnel funds earmarked for emergency Covid spending into party political research is jaw dropping and morally reprehensible.”
Conservative MP Andrew Bowie intervened, and highlighted that more than half a billion pounds had been spent by the Scottish Government on emergency coronavirus contracts, which had been given out without being put to competitive tender.
Joanna Cherry, the SNP MP, said the Conservative government "abhors scrutiny".
She said it was only thanks to the work of the Good Law Project that the government's "chicanery" had been exposed.
Ms Cherry said the UK Government " likes to run the country and the four nations of this union, free from scrutiny or accountability." adding: "It likes to do so based on this 'Little Britain, me first' ideology and the personal ambition of ministers who aren't here to show their face in this house this afternoon."
Health minister Jo Churchill accused Ian Blackford of a “smear” over his opening remarks.
She told the Commons: “As (Mr Blackford) will appreciate, Covid-19 has presented this country with one of the most unprecedented challenges we have ever faced.”
Ms Churchill said Mr Blackford was “well aware of the public contract regulations, which existed before the pandemic, which allowed the Government to procure at speed in times of emergency”.
She added: “And I would very gently say these were the same systems that happened in Scotland, and in Wales. We have an unprecedented global crisis and quite rightly people have to use existing regulation which allows them to flex in order to deliver for their populations.”
Ms Churchill also defended the appointment process of non-executive directors to Government departments.
She said: “Those non-executive directors are selected through a selection programme… because they hold skills – commercial skills, legal skills, and so much from the outside world.
"If you are telling me that the way one votes in an election then makes you unable to scrutinise that makes a mockery of the whole way and set-up of select committees and so on.
"It is important that you can… that people are enabled from the outside world to come in with their skills in order to scrutinise.”
Alistair Carmichael, Liberal Democrat MP for Orkney and Shetland, said there was no reason to delay an inquiry into the handling of the pandemic until next year, as currently planned by the UK Government.
He said: "That inquiry is going to have to deal with so much mroe than just the public health aspect of it, that a bit of sympathetic and strategic planning of the time taken and the matters we are talking about today - Covid contracts - are exactly the sort of thing that could be dealt with in the early stages of that inquiry and that is why we should be able to start it."
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