UK government ministers have been compelled to rethink the way coronavirus tests are bought after it was revealed NHS England and NHS Wales were competing over testing.
In Wales, the devolved government's health minister Vaughan Gething said he was "very disappointed" with a manufacturer, confirmed to be Swiss multinational healthcare company Roche, which had been scheduled to supply up to 5,000 COVID-19 tests a day in the country.
— Adrian Masters (@adrianmasters84) April 1, 2020
Whitehall sources reportedly told Sky News the company appeared to want to prioritise NHS England’s order as it was bigger, leading the firm to cancel the consignment to Cardiff - this led to a crisis meeting between the health ministers of the UK’s four constituent nations, including Health Secretary Matt Hancock, on 27 March.
At a press conference 1st April, Gething said the meeting centred on discussions about how supply chains would work, for example in respect of Personal Protective Equipment, “to make sure we had agreement on UK-wide rules and equity for the four nations of the UK”, and “make sure supply is being dealt with on a UK-wide basis”.
— Plaid Cymru (@Plaid_Cymru) April 1, 2020
"It absolutely seems we have been - whether gazumped - [it is] certainly the case the deal hasn't gone through in Wales, and we're led to believe that is because a larger deal in England has taken precedence. How can we have any confidence in a system whereby we don't have any independent means of securing our needs in Wales if we're just told to trust the UK government to provide us without any ability to intervene ourselves? That certainly doesn't give me the confidence that Wales' needs will be best served,” Adam Price, leader of Welsh separatist party Plaid Cymru, told Sky.
