Tory ministers a legal challenge after failing to account for an estimated £3bn of private contracts during the Covid pandemic.
Figures revealed today appear to show the huge sum is unaccounted for in the torrent of contracts handed out to private firms since April.
Last month the Department of Health said £11bn of contracts had been agreed between April 1 and September 7 - most of them related to coronavirus.
Yet analysis of publicly-available contracts data could find less than £8bn of contracts awarded by the government. The analysis by Tussell, a data provider on government, found £7.7bn of Covid contracts and £74m of others.