Exclusive: Britain bought PPE worth £320m from firms linked to Chinese regime

British officials paid up to £320m of taxpayer money to Chinese state-backed companies amid a scramble to secure medical supplies at the height of the coronavirus crisis.

Health authorities agreed almost a dozen deals with firms linked to the Communist regime in Beijing as they raced to buy ventilators and PPE after Covid hit, according to Telegraph analysis of contract details published by the Government.

The contracts sparked anger from critics who believe the UK should be distancing itself from China due to the one-party state's brutal treatment of Uighur Muslims and a crackdown on free speech in Hong Kong.

They will also raise questions about how carefully Britain vetted its suppliers and whether the UK paid over the odds.

Tom Tugendhat, the Tory chairman of the Foreign Affairs select committee, said: “We need to reduce dependence on companies controlled by states that seek to use that leverage to influence our actions and those of our allies. That means building up partnerships with others and reducing our reliance on China’s state-owned businesses.”

The Department for Health and Social Care signed ten contracts with companies with direct links to the Chinese government, worth a total of £148m.

Beneficiaries included China Meheco, which is controlled by the the state-owned China General Technology Group and was awarded four deals worth nearly £18m for PPE and ventilators.

China General Technology also owns a security firm calling China Xinxing Corporation, which makes military equipment and restraining devices.

State-backed exporter Beijing Union Glory Investment was awarded just under £100m worth of PPE contracts in April and May, and subsidiaries of state-run pharmaceutical group Sinopharm secured £31m in contracts over the same period.

Meanwhile the Department of Health in Northern Ireland awarded a contract worth between £60m and £170m for personal protective equipment to a subsidiary of state conglomerate China Resources in June.

The Northern Ireland Office did not respond to a request for further information on the finances behind the agreement.

Benedict Rogers, an adviser to the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, said: "This illustrates the absolutely urgent need to reduce our strategic dependency on China in certain critical sectors such as PPE, and diversify our supply chains more generally.

"It is outrageous that the regime that gave us the pandemic, through its mendacity, irresponsibility, failure to alert the world in a timely manner, and its repression of the truth - by silencing whistleblowers - instead of repressing the virus at the very beginning, is now profiting from it.

"We must learn to produce these vital products ourselves and in other markets so that we do not have to give this brutal regime, committing egregious human rights violations, hundreds of millions of pounds worth of business of this kind."

The contracts were awarded despite increasingly strong rhetoric from the Government on China's human rights abuses.

Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab accused the Chinese government of "gross, egregious" conduct towards the Uighur population in Xinjiang, where thousands of people have been forced into so-called re-education camps. There has also been an outcry over a new law that prevents protest in Hong Kong.

Ministers are reportedly mulling new powers which would allow them to crackdown on foreign takeovers deemed a threat to national security - even if these have already happened - as part of a drive to protect the country from hostile powers.

A government spokesman said: “Proper due diligence is carried out for all government contracts and we take these checks extremely seriously - all suppliers must follow the highest legal and ethical standards.

“We have been working tirelessly to deliver PPE and medical equipment to protect our health and social care staff on the frontline and treat patients and the rapid action we took to increase the number of ventilators in the UK meant every patient requiring a ventilator has had access to one.”