Matt Hancock, the former health secretary, failed to disclose messages he had exchanged with Owen Paterson, who was caught up in a lobbying scandal last year, a national watchdog has said.

As reported by The Guardian, the National Audit Office (NAO) concluded that the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) did not record properly why it awarded contracts worth nearly £500m to the healthcare firm, Randox.

Additionally, the NAO found that Hancock's department at the time failed to declare four meetings its ministers held with Randox as it was required to do under transparency rules.

No minutes were kept of these meetings either, so the NAO found it wasn't possible to ascertain if the contracts had been awarded correctly.

Dorset Echo: Owen Paterson resigned from his position as an MP following the lobbying scandal (PA)Owen Paterson resigned from his position as an MP following the lobbying scandal (PA)

The NAO's report, which was published on Thursday (March 24) added that the DHSC provided it with “incomplete or no documentation” on “other significant aspects of the procurement”, including detailed contractual negotiations and consideration of potential conflicts of interest.

In addition, it made reference to “some private correspondence exchanges” between Mr Hancock and then MP for North Shropshire Owen Paterson, which it said had “recently been made available to the department”.

Mr Paterson resigned from Parliament in November last year after he was found to have broken rules by repeatedly lobbying on behalf of Randox and another company, for which he was acting as a paid consultant.

“The then Secretary of State told us he did not forward all of these messages to the department at the time as they were not substantive discussions and so he was not required to do so,” the report said.

“These messages were not inconsistent with what the then Secretary of State saw as his ministerial responsibility to drive progress, rapidly building testing capacity with Randox and other suppliers.”

The messages not forwarded by Mr Hancock at the time were kept by him and made available to Parliament in February 2022, it added.