Health minister had meetings on the books with the firm at the heart of the Owen Paterson scandal 5 times but only declared one meeting

Lord Jim Bethell

JUSTIN TALLIS/AFP via Getty Images

• Health minister Lord Bethell met with Randox five times, but only one meeting was declared.
• Randox was the firm at the heart of the Owen Paterson scandal, paying him £100,000 a year as a consultant.
• Internal emails suggest four further meetings between Bethell and Randox occurred.

Health minister Lord Bethell planned to meet with the firm at the heart of the Owen Paterson scandal four more times than previously disclosed, internal emails released by the government suggest.

The government was forced on Thursday to publish internal documents on the relationship between health ministers and Randox, a firm that provided COVID-19 tests after being awarded a £133 million contract.

Paterson, then the MP for North Shropshire, was a paid consultant for the firm, on a £100,000-a-year salary at the time. The documents show the extensive lobbying Paterson did of then-health secretary Matt Hancock and then-health minister Bethell.

They reveal four further meetings were on the books between Bethell and Randox that the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) has not revealed until now, despite the requirement to publish the details of such meetings on a quarterly basis.

Only one meeting, on April 9, 2020, has ever been recorded between Bethell and Randox, with Paterson present. 

But internal correspondence sets out plans for Randox to attend a further four meetings with Bethell:

• The weekend of April 4 and April 5 2020, Randox's managing director Peter Fitzgerald is listed scheduled to have a 15 minute call with Bethell. There is no confirmation that the call took place, however transparency records for that weekend show many of the other calls in the same list occurred.
• Fitzgerald was present at a call on April 8 2020 with the Testing Taskforce, but neither Fitzgerald nor Randox appear in the transparency register for this meeting. 
• On May 12 2020, following a briefing call on May 13 for Bethell officials say they will organise a call with Randox on May 14. "The actual conversation should be kept very small [...] plus a lawyer present with a detailed note being taken," one official writes. While planning the call with Randox on May 11 2020, Bethell's private secretary says Bethell had indicated he hoped for a "1:1 with Owen Paterson beforehand as well (who I understand is a consultant employed by Randox".
• There is a reference to a call, via Microsoft Teams, between Bethell and Randox on August 7 2020 to discuss a letter sent by Fitzgerald to Hancock on August 6 2020.

Insider asked DHSC if these meetings did go ahead, as outlined in the emails, but DHSC declined to confirm any details on what happened to the meetings.

A message from Lord Bethell's private secretary referring to Randox being present at a meeting with the Testing Taskforce that was not declared.

UK Government

There is no suggestion of wrongdoing by Randox.

Insider has seen emails from the Good Law Project to DHSC regarding other seemingly missing ministerial meetings, first queried in November 2021, with the Good Law Project yet to receive a proper reply by February 2022, despite assurances from the press office of a response "asap."

The opposition has called for the government to clarify the status of the meetings.

Labour's deputy leader, Angela Rayner MP, told Insider: "This scandal gets murkier by the minute. After months of delay and denial, the government has shown us that there were meetings between Ministers and businesses that won multimillion pound contracts that they did not declare.

"When disgraced Tory politicians meet Tory donors in private and millions of pounds of taxpayers' money is spent, the public will want to know what was said.

"The department and Lord Bethell must correct the record of ministerial meetings immediately with full details."

Jo Maugham, director of the Good Law Project, told Insider: "Recording your meetings for the public record isn't that hard. So when ministers consistently fail to do it you do rather scratch your head and wonder why.

"That question is particularly acute when the transparency they are dodging relates to highly controversial awards of sizeable public contracts to those with political connections."

Bethell's meetings have previously failed to be declared in government transparency registers. 27 meetings held with companies that went on to win £1.14 billion of government contracts were not declared properly, Byline Times reported.

Bethell also claimed that texts with a different firm, Abingdon Health, could not be disclosed as they had been made on a private phone that had been lost. He later said the phone was broken. He also deleted messages but thought they had been backed up, The Sunday Times reported.

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