Mike Wood
MP for Kingswinford and South Staffordshire · Conservative · United Kingdom
“The overwhelming cytokine storms, microvascular clotting and rapid progression to acute respiratory distress syndrome and multi-organ failure seen in covid intensive care units are classic manifestations of viral sepsis.”
“Up to 50% of sepsis survivors suffer prolonged physical, cognitive and psychological impairments from debilitating fatigue and cognitive brain fog to severe muscle weakness and post-traumatic stress disorder.”
“That makes it so difficult to have a meaningful figure for the number of cases, deaths and serious disabilities as a result of sepsis. We really need more consistency in the way that is coded, as well as a guide to best practice. I join the Minister in offering my condolences to the hon.”
“Absolutely. Of course, some infections are almost unavoidable, but where infections such as UTIs can clearly be reduced with the right care and precautions, we must do everything we can to reduce those risks. Every Member in this Chamber has constituents whose lives have been permanently transformed by sepsis.”
“Like many in politics, my behaviour can at times appear to some people to be a little idiosyncratic; fortunately, Laura realised that, even for a Member of Parliament, that was not entirely normal behaviour.”
“The international theme for this year could not be more apt: “Invest in Sepsis—Save Lives.” The World Health Organisation recognises sepsis as one of the leading causes of death and disability globally, estimating that sepsis-related illnesses account for one in every five deaths worldwide.”
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“They have watched the inquiry conclude; they have heard the apologies from the Dispatch Box; and they have seen the compensation scheme launched, yet they still wake up every day wondering when their claim will even be assessed. For the families who have lost loved ones, time is a cruel companion. Of course, many of those waiting are now very elderly. Tragically, victims and affected family members are dying before they receive the compensation that they are owed. We must ask ourselves: what comfort is a compensation scheme if it arrives too late? IBCA has stated that it expects to bring in all currently registered claims from living infected people and estates by March 2027. We must push to see if that timeline can be safely accelerated, because for some, even next year is simply too far away.”
“Since the registration of intent opened, more than 18,500 registrations have been made, yet we know from IBCA’s own figures that the number of payments made to affected individuals—the widows, the widowers, the parents and the children of those who died—remains painfully low. The same is true for the number of payments to those claiming on behalf of deceased infected individuals. There have been thousands of registrations, but only a tiny fraction of claims from estates and affected people have been fully processed and paid. We hear from families across the country who feel that they are stuck in an unbearable limbo.”
“For those living infected victims who are already registered with existing support schemes, these payments offer a long-overdue measure of financial security and tangible recognition of the horrific wrongs that they have endured. Getting billions of pounds out of the door to those who need it is no small administrative feat, and we support the progress that the Minister and the Government have made on that front. However, it is exactly because we share the Government’s desire to see the scheme succeed that we must urgently raise the profound frustration being voiced by those who are still waiting. Progress for living infected victims on existing schemes has accelerated, but the reality for the thousands of affected victims and the estates of infected victims who have tragically passed away is still one of agonising delay.”
“It was under his determined stewardship that the Government accepted the moral case for compensation and passed the legislation needed to establish the delivery body to administer this scheme. He faced an incredibly complex technical challenge, but his deep personal commitment to the infected and the affected communities ensured that the crucial groundwork, including the initial framework for multibillion-pound interim payments, was laid. I know that the Paymaster General and the dedicated civil servants at IBCA are building on that foundation and working intensely to stand up a complex compensation scheme from scratch. We welcome the fact that more than £2.1 billion has been paid out to more than 3,200 victims.”
“The victims of this scandal, those infected and those affected, have spent decades fighting the establishment for truth and justice. Now that the truth has been laid bare by Sir Brian Langstaff’s inquiry, it is the duty of the state—and that means all of us in this House—to deliver that justice without further delay. It is entirely right that we begin by recognising the significant progress that has been made, because the establishment of the Infected Blood Compensation Authority, with the commencement of actual payments, represents a monumental milestone in this decades-long journey. In doing so, I again place on record my profound gratitude for the foundational work done by my right hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (John Glen) when he was the Paymaster General.”
“I thank right hon. and hon. Members from across the House for their thoughtful, measured and often heartbreaking contributions. I would particularly mention the hon. Member for Eltham and Chislehurst (Clive Efford) for securing and leading this debate, and my right hon. Friends the Members for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) and for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) and my hon. Friend the Member for East Grinstead and Uckfield (Mims Davies), who spoke movingly about cases involving their constituents and the heartbreaking effects this scandal has had on them. The infected blood scandal remains the most devastating treatment disaster in the history of our national health service. The scale of the tragedy—the lives cut short, the families shattered, the trust destroyed—is something this House and indeed the entire country must never forget.”
“Does my hon. Friend recognise that, for many rural locations, the rural pub is the last-standing business in the village? It is the post office, the village store, the job club, the parent and child club and the club for the elderly and lonely. I have even seen, through Pub is the Hub, a barber in the lounge of a pub. It cuts people’s hair during the day and serves them drinks in the evening. Does my hon. Friend agree that when the Government impose extra fiscal pressures on pubs, what they lose is probably worth far, far more than the revenue they think they are gaining?”
“Does the hon. Gentlemen recognise that if the level of alcohol duty is one of the big obstacles facing rural pubs, what we need to be able to do is widen the differential in the duty rates paid on beer sold on draught in pubs or licensed premises compared with bottles and cans drunk at home alone? That would be impossible if we rejoined the European Union. [ Interruption. ]”
“I am sure that one of the messages the Minister will have heard from pub owners is that the unique way that pubs are valued for business rates—through an assessment of their fair maintainable trade—means that if they invest in their own business, one of the first things that happens is they face a higher bill, long before they have started to repay the money that they invested. Will the Minister consider addressing that with a business rates holiday to provide space for businesses to recoup some of their investment before it is taken off them in business rates?”
“Engineering firms in Kingswinford and South Staffordshire are integral to automotive and aerospace supply chains, so how can it be right or in the national interest that they pay a tariff of 50% on the steel they import and use, while European producers making those parts with the same steel pay low or no tariffs?”
“First, we must demand clear, measurable targets, specifying exactly how many clinical trials we expect to see, how many patients will be recruited and who is accountable. Secondly, we need an immediate, aggressive focus on repurposing existing licensed drugs that already control other cancers to see whether they can cross the blood-brain barrier and save lives today. We cannot allow the next generation of patients to be left stranded. Dan and the thousands of families like his are not asking for miracles; they are looking for justice.”
“Let us be honest: that gold standard has barely changed in decades. It is designed to manage the disease for a short time, not to cure it, and when it runs its course, our constituents are effectively told to go home and to prepare to die. These outcomes do not happen by accident. They are the direct result of structures and choices made over many years. When a clinical trial does happen, like the groundbreaking trial established in memory of Margaret, the sister of the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Dame Siobhain McDonagh), it happens because a handful of grieving, determined people refuse to take no for an answer. If it requires extraordinary political intervention just to start one trial, the system is fundamentally broken, and we need a radical shift.”
“Behind every statistic is a human face. For me, it is my senior parliamentary assistant, Dan Horrocks—a father, husband, a four-time cancer survivor and a brilliant colleague who has fought this disease for 14 years. We are incredibly proud of Dan’s strength and his tireless campaigning, for which he was deservedly awarded the British Empire Medal in the new year honours list. Dan’s journey began with persistent headaches. Three separate GPs missed it. It was only caught because of the keen eyes of a local optician at a free eye test. That is the first hurdle: diagnosis. Far too often, symptoms are dismissed as routine migraines, but the second hurdle is even more devastating. Once a patient is diagnosed with an aggressive glioblastoma, they are offered the NHS gold standard of treatment: surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy.”
“The Minister was clear that the previous Defence Secretary asked him to remain in post; will he be equally clear about what exactly he disagrees with in the letter that the previous Defence Secretary sent the Prime Minister about the defence investment plan last Thursday?”
“The previous Government launched the emergency alert system in March 2023 after almost two years of public testing. It was an important part of our preparedness for a national emergency, allowing Government and the emergency services to send a text alert to mobile phones in a situation where there is perceived to be an immediate risk to life. However, a ping on a mobile phone cannot be a substitute for robust national infrastructure, and strategic documents are meaningless if the core guidance for our frontline responders remains over a decade old. It is now time for the Government to move beyond issuing glossy action plans and start doing the hard foundational work of actually preparing this country for the realities of the modern threat landscape.”
“The Government committed to publishing further information on business impacts alongside the national risk register, including a dedicated business section on the Prepare website. Where are they? None of the commitments seems to have been fulfilled. If the Government expect the private sector to take a leading role in improving our preparedness, they must honour their commitments to support businesses in doing so. At a local level, local resilience forums are the absolute frontline of our emergency response, yet the foundational wider guidance detailing the fundamental role of those forums in emergency response was last updated in 2013. That means that we are asking our local emergency planners to combat the complex, cascading threats of 2026 using a conceptual framework that was drawn up in what may as well have been a different world.”
“Ministers must urgently rectify this failure and explain to the House why they have failed to publish those expectations on schedule, leaving interdepartmental boundaries dangerously ambiguous. This failure extends to the Government’s promises to the private sector. The resilience action plan includes a commitment to use the critical national infrastructure knowledge base to map out the various resilience standards to which businesses in those vital sectors are held. While Ministers have confirmed that the interactive map of vulnerabilities has been completed, they have not provided any timeline on their progress in mapping out those resilience standards. Furthermore, businesses were promised a comprehensive package of support to help them to improve their own resilience.”
“It is now approaching the middle of the year, but there is seemingly no sign of those vital expectations. Why does that administrative failure matter? Take the grave case of a national power outage. The resilience action plan claims that the Cabinet Office would provide oversight, but experts at the Royal United Services Institute have explicitly warned that the current fragmentation of responsibilities between the Cabinet Office, the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero and arms-length bodies like the National Energy System Operator risks creating profound confusion. They warned that this fragmentation will fundamentally slow down central Government’s response during an acute crisis.”
“A Government who are actively hollowing out that macroeconomic foundation are inherently making Britain more vulnerable and far less equipped to absorb and recover from future crises. Turning to the machinery of central Government, the Amber Book, updated in April 2025, rightly makes explicit the leadership role of the Cabinet Office in the cross-Government response to national emergencies, yet its operational execution relies entirely on seamless co-ordination with lead Government Departments. Nearly a year ago, the Government explicitly committed to publishing refreshed lead Government Department expectations to clarify the exact role of the Cabinet Office and other Departments in planning and responding to crises. Ministers promised that we would have those by spring 2026.”
“When the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster introduced the UK Government’s resilience action plan last year, he promised that it would assess the UK’s resilience, enable a whole of society approach and significantly improve public sector resilience. Almost a year later, however, what we find is a framework characterised by high-level bureaucratic ambition that is fatally undermined by deep structural fragility, broken promises and ministerial inaction. I must start with the foundational prerequisite for national resilience—the economy. I understand why the Government want to talk about resilience planning, but they ignore the elephant in the room: a collapsing economy locked in a doom loop of high spend, high debt and high taxes. True national resilience requires immense fiscal headroom and economic stability.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Barker, for this vital debate on our nation’s preparedness for national emergencies. We live in an era defined by profound and accelerating global volatility. The primary duty of any state is the protection of its citizens: we must ensure that the United Kingdom is as properly prepared to meet the threats of an unstable world as it is to respond to a domestic crisis. Our adversaries are becoming bolder. We have seen hostile state action inching closer to our shores, with alarming incidents such as Russian-flagged vessels anchoring mere miles off the UK coast and directly above the critical transatlantic telecommunication cables that underpin our digital economy.”
“I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way and allowing me to give one further example that I hope the reviewers will consider. Lloyds will this month close the last existing bank in Kingswinford and South Staffordshire, leaving all of my constituents, whether urban or rural, without a proper bank. However, none of the villages are eligible for banking hubs because of the presence of building societies—sometimes part-time building societies —within the villages. Does he agree that while our building societies provide a fantastic service, they do not provide the range of services that my constituents, particularly those with small businesses, need that could be offered through a banking hub?”
“On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Last week, I tabled a written question to the Foreign Secretary, asking whether Jonathan Powell was subject to scrutiny vetting before or after he was appointed as the Prime Minister’s special envoy on the Chagos negotiations. I have not yet received a response. Given that Morgan McSweeney appeared to tell the Foreign Affairs Committee this morning that the vetting process began only after Powell was later appointed as National Security Adviser, how can I secure an official answer from the Foreign Office to this basic question before Parliament prorogues?”
“The UK has become a global leader in agri-tech and particularly selective breeding, largely because of our flexible regulatory framework, including the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act 2023. That would not have happened if we were still members of the European Union. The BioIndustry Association says that dynamic alignment would threaten UK leadership in biotech innovation. Will the Minister commit to securing a carve-out for precision breeding so that our success in this vital sector is not threatened by new or future EU legislation?”
“I think the House and the public outside will have heard that the Minister is refusing to give that commitment to the representatives of this vital sector. However, he will know that the high cost of fertilisers is one of the biggest pressures on British farming and food prices. Raising carbon prices to the level of the EU’s carbon border adjustment mechanism is projected to add around £100 a tonne to that cost. At a time of high food costs and squeezed food security, does he really think that now is a sensible time to hammer British farming yet again?”
“What assessment has the Minister made of the EU’s emerging “Buy European” policies? Is that not a protectionist barrier by the European Union? Finally, if social value is now mandatory at 10%, what assessment has been made of the risk that it adds cost and complexity, particularly for SMEs? I know that the House will want clear answers.”
“On prompt payment, how many suppliers have actually been excluded from major contracts for failing to meet the required standards? If this strategy is truly about value for money, why have the Government still not resolved the fragmentation, poor-quality frameworks and poor use of data and technology that were identified by the National Audit Office? On national security, contracting authorities are now required to assess risks not just from prime contractors, but from associated persons and subcontractors. How many procurements have been referred for national security consideration, and how many suppliers have been excluded or challenged as a result? What assurances can the Minister give that public contracts are not still flowing into supply chains with links to hostile states?”
“I congratulate the hon. Member for Stafford (Leigh Ingham) on securing this urgent question—I know how rare it is for a Government Parliamentary Private Secretary. [ Interruption. ] She is not any more—I apologise. I welcome the Government’s ambition to modernise public procurement, but ambition, as ever, must be matched by delivery. There are a number of questions that the Minister must answer today. The Government promised transparency through a new online register of commercial agreements. When precisely will that register be live, and will it be comprehensive from day one? Ministers often speak of backing small business. Will the Minister publish in a single, accessible place every Department’s SME target, its latest outturn and whether it is on or off track?”
“Finally, and most importantly, what contingency plans has the Minister put in place in case it becomes necessary to terminate Capita’s contract for the CSPS, just as he has today terminated its contract for the Royal Mail scheme?”
“Will he confirm that his Department has delivered the standardised mitigation letter that CSPS members can share with lenders to explain their temporary financial difficulties? That was promised last month; has it been delivered? I understand that there will be a commercial session on 28 April to discuss the penalties that Capita is facing, and what officials have called the “wider commercial position”. Will the Minister be attending in person? Will he commit to updating the House at the earliest opportunity, following that meeting? Will he elaborate on exactly what his officials mean by Capita’s “wider commercial position”?”
“We all agree that it is in everyone’s interests that the operational stability of the CSPS be restored as quickly as possible. After all, Capita won the contract because of the failure of the previous MyCSP contract, and clearly a further change would mean more disruption, causing further harm to those who have already been so badly impacted. Ministers must ensure that Capita meets its contractual obligations consistently, and that any penalty clauses in the contract that can be enforced are enforced, to allow compensation to be paid. The Minister has some questions to answer. For those who are missing out because of Capita’s failings, will the Minister unequivocally commit to delivering a functioning service in the timeframe that he has set himself?”
“The Committee called on the Cabinet Office to fully develop contingency plans before making a final decision about whether Capita should take over administration on 1 December last year. The Minister’s Department confirmed that—four months after the transition was completed—Capita had still not met three transition milestones, while one was only partially met It is only at this point that the Minister has brought forward the contingency plans—the same contingency plans that the Public Accounts Committee recommended months before—but the warning signs were there, and they should have been clear and obvious. Despite that, last November, a full year and a half after the Government took office, they wrote to trade unions, confirming that Ministers were pressing ahead with Capita’s contract..”
“Sadly, the constituents and others from around the country who have contacted me about Capita simply would not recognise the Minister’s claim of answer times being down to two minutes. This is not the way to reward a career of dedicated public service. Last year, the National Audit Office highlighted that Capita had failed to meet three of the six key transition milestones that had been due by March 2025. All those milestones related to scheme design and operational readiness. In October last year—two months before Ministers had to make a final decision on the transition to Capita—the Public Accounts Committee noted that Capita had missed milestones to deliver its IT systems.”
“It is clear that the current situation, as the Minister said, is the culmination of a series of entirely unforced errors by Capita. Its failure to adequately administer the CSPS has caused significant financial distress to thousands of former public servants, such as my constituent Chris. He has found himself without the pension he was relying on at just the time that his wife has had to step back from work after a cancer diagnosis. These people worked hard and planned responsibly for retirement, on the basis that the CSPS would be there for them when they needed it. Capita’s failures have left them anxious, frustrated and, in many cases, desperately out of pocket, but in all too many cases that I am aware of, Capita has been utterly unresponsive.”
“I begin by paying tribute to our fantastic public servants, civil servants and postal workers. The vast majority give so much in service of our country and the general public. This week, perhaps more than any other, is a reminder that it is Ministers’ responsibility to provide the political leadership so that those workers can deliver. The Minister’s decision to terminate the Royal Mail statutory pension scheme is enormously consequential and will be welcomed by many in this House, but more so by our many retired postal workers. While I appreciate being given advance sight of today’s statement, it does seem that the Minister, particularly in regard to the civil service pension scheme, has come to the House with more of a plan than a statement.”
“The Prime Minister dissembles over what he knew about Sistema and Mandelson, but the Cabinet Office due diligence report sent to the Prime Minister on 11 December 2024 stated: “Mandelson served as a non-executive director of the Russian conglomerate Sistema, which is itself the majority shareholder of RTI, a defence technology company…Mandelson remained on the board until June 2017, long after Putin’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.” Will the Prime Minister finally confirm that he knew that Mandelson was a director of Sistema long after the invasion of Crimea, but appointed him anyway?”
“They have suffered for far too long in ways that we can barely begin to imagine, and no compensation scheme can ever reverse the horrific harms needlessly done to them. I hope, however, that the universal acceptance of the conclusion of the reports and the determination of us all to do what we can to make changes that will stop others suffering in future will bring them some comfort.”
“516.] I also asked him how and when the inquiry might be drawn to a close so there could be a degree of policy certainty. I did not hear him refer to that in his statement, so will he confirm that, with the implementation of the key recommendations from the additional report and Sir Brian’s letters, the public inquiry has now drawn to a close? Once again, I thank Sir Brian Langstaff and his team for their diligent and comprehensive work over the past eight years to help deliver some justice after decades of scandal and suffering. Most of all, I again pay tribute to the tireless campaigning of the many victims and their families who were infected or affected by the infected blood scandal.”
“We welcome that pragmatic step, but can he clarify whether the removal of the 25% deduction for past care will be applied automatically to all existing offers, or will those people who have already received offers need to reapply to have their awards adjusted? As the Minister said, the compensation scheme must “embody their stories”. Justice delayed is justice denied, and we must ensure that the new supplementary awards do not become a secondary bureaucratic hurdle for a community that has already given so much testimony and waited so long. Before I close, I turn to a matter that seems to be missing from the Minister’s statement: the inquiry. When he last updated the House before Christmas, I raised the need to “move from a period of review to one of rectification and delivery.” —[ Official Report , 30 October 2025; Vol. 774, c.”
“Regarding the 50% increase to the core autonomy award for those infected at age 18 or under, will he confirm that that will also apply to those infected through their mothers in utero? The Government rightly aim to minimise the administrative burden and the demand for evidence. We welcome the £60,000 lump sum for those with clear potential to earn but who lack evidence of earnings, but how will the Infected Blood Compensation Authority define “clear potential” without falling back into the lengthy, individualised assessments that the Minister says he wants to avoid? Finally on the compensation scheme, the Minister announced that for past financial loss, the Government will use whichever calculation is “most financially beneficial” for the recipient.”
“Given that the infected blood inquiry’s additional report was published back in July last year, will he reassure the House that the legislative timetable will not lead to further agonising delays for those in declining health? Will the first quarterly feedback summaries, which he has promised will come in July, provide a hard deadline for when those new level 2B severity awards and backdated supply chain management payments will actually reach bank accounts? If not, does he have an expectation of when those payments will be made? I think the Minister mentioned increased core injury awards for bereaved parents whose children died before the age of 18. Can he provide greater clarity on the justification for excluding parents whose children were infected when they were young children but turned 18 before the time of their death?”
“We therefore commend the Minister for the specific increases to the unethical research awards, and in particular the uplift to £60,000 for the survivors of Treloar’s school and the expansion of the scheme to include those treated as adults. Those are necessary recognitions of a truly outrageous chapter of the scandal. However, while the Minister spoke of tangible, systemic change, many victims and their families will be looking at the fine print with a degree of trepidation. I therefore have a number of questions regarding the delivery and scope of these announcements. The Minister noted that further legislation will be required later this year to enact these substantial changes.”
“I thank the Minister for his statement and for providing an advance copy. We naturally welcome the progress reported today. The fact that 3,273 people have received offers totalling more than £2 billion is a significant milestone in a decades-long struggle for justice. I thank the Infected Blood Compensation Authority for its work to speed up the payments. As Baroness Finn said in the other place, “what we call the scandal was, in truth, the infliction, collectively, of grievous harm upon thousands of people by the state.” —[ Official Report, House of Lords, 4 November 2025; Vol. 849, c. 1821.] Nowhere was that more egregious or more shocking than in those cases where victims were infected as a result of deliberate experimentation in the name of science.”
“Hospitality adds nearly £2 billion to Northern Ireland’s economy, supporting more than 75,000 jobs, but last year more than 2,000 hospitality workers in Northern Ireland lost their jobs. Does the Secretary of State agree with Unite the union, of which I know he is a member, that this is the result of the Government’s disastrous national insurance rises?”
“If I may just speak very personally—this might be a word for the hon. Member for Hamilton and Clyde Valley—perhaps, in the longer term, the Government may wish to consider whether it is still appropriate that Members of the Whips Office should continue to be paid at a rather lower rate than Parliamentary Under-Secretaries. That is obviously a discussion for a different day and not one on which I think my party, nor the Minister’s, has a collective view. I have only one question. As the entitled salaries are increasing while the claimed salaries continue to be frozen, will the Minister tell the Committee how that affects pension entitlements? Are they calculated according to the salary to which Ministers are entitled or the salaries that are actually paid?”
“I am in the rather fortunate position of being able to stand here as an Opposition Whip and shadow Minister who does not receive a ministerial salary, so I cannot be accused of having any conflict of interest in supporting the Government in what appears to be a sensible and, as the Minister said, technical measure that brings the de jure rules into line with practice over the past few years. It makes sense to exclude the salaries of permanent secretaries, as the previous review concluded, not least because permanent secretary salary bands are so broad as to make a mid-point measurement largely meaningless anyway. As the Minister says, we understand that the pay freeze that has been in place, certainly for the 15 years since the reduction at the start of the coalition Government in 2010, will continue.”
“Farmers in Kingswinford and South Staffordshire have contacted me in recent days about the steep rise in the price of key inputs such as fertilisers and straw. Current events are likely to make these pressures even more acute, with serious implications for farm viability and domestic food production. Could we have a debate in Government time on the rising costs facing British farmers and the long-term resilience of UK food production?”
“Although many of the provisions are technical in nature, they will nevertheless shape how the new procurement framework operates in practice. It would therefore be helpful if the Minister could provide reassurance that the central digital platform is ready to support the expanded responsibilities under the regulations, and that the contracting authorities and suppliers, particularly smaller organisations and enterprises, have been given sufficient guidance to adapt to these changes. I look forward to the Minister’s response.”
“You can never have too many procurement SIs in a week, but for those who did not have the pleasure of Monday afternoon’s Committee, I will spare them some of the background information and just say that the Opposition support the draft regulations. As the Minister says, they will give effect to important provisions introduced by the previous Government’s Procurement Act 2023. The details required to be published for contracts over £30,000 are particularly important, as are the measures to ensure transparency for some sub-threshold contracts. Understandably, the Government have again not produced a separate impact assessment for the draft regulations, relying instead on the broader impact assessment that accompanied the Procurement Act and the associated reforms in 2022-23.”
“Until the Government can answer that question convincingly, the British public will view this proposal in exactly the same way that they view most grand Whitehall technology schemes: with deep suspicion, a modicum of mild amusement and a firm determination to keep their identity exactly where it belongs—in their own pocket, not floating somewhere in the Government’s cloud.”