Health Secretary Matt Hancock offered no apology in regard to breaking the law or controversial PPE contracts as he claimed he did "the right thing".
Mr Hancock faced a grilling on this morning after the High Court ruled the Government unlawfully failed to publish details of billions of pounds' worth of coronavirus-related contracts.
The Health Secretary "failed to publish redacted contracts in accordance with the transparency policy", a judge said on Friday, leading Labour to call for greater transparency and accountability.
Appearing on the Andrew Marr Show and Sophy Ridge on Sunday Mr Hancock did not offer an apology.
Asked by Andrew Marr about PPE contracts, Mr Hancock said his team did the "right thing" and was "totally focused on saving lives".
He said there was a "technical issue" in that "we were just over a fortnight late on average with the publication of these things".
He said: "We were very, very tight on PPE and... thanks to the incredible work of my team we didn't have national shortages."
Marr asked whether there was something "fundamentally wrong" in the awarding of PPE contracts and Mr Hancock said there were "loose ends" that needed tying up but stressed again his team did the "right thing".
After his appearance on Marr, Labour MP David Lammy tweeted: "Matt Hancock refusing to apologise on #Marr even after the High Court ruled he had broken procurement law. Once again this government is treating the law with contempt. The damage this does to public trust is permanent."
Mr Hancock said he would publish what is legally required after the High Court ruling.
He told Sky: "On average, we published them just over a fortnight later than they should have been, and there's a reason for that, and the reason is that there was a global shortage of PPE and we needed to buy PPE to save lives.
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"My officials, with my full support, spent every waking hour buying PPE so that even though we came close we never actually ran out of PPE in this country - and they did that even though the paperwork got delayed by, on average, just over a fortnight.
"That's what the court found and I - and I think any secretary of state in my position - would absolutely back my officials in doing the right thing and saving lives."
He said the Government would "commit to publishing on the standard basis what is legally required and what is normal to publish".
