The government has been criticised for spending up to
£600,000 defending a legal challenge against its award of a contract to a company run by long-term
associates of Michael Gove and Dominic Cummings.
The estimated costs could exceed the £550,000 the government spent on the contract with the company, Public First, to conduct focus groups on its Covid-19 messaging.
Public First is a policy and research company run by
James Frayne and Rachel Wolf, a married couple who have both previously worked with
Gove, the Cabinet Office minister, and
Cummings, who was the prime minister’s chief adviser when the contract was agreed last March.
The case is due to be decided at a one-day hearing on Monday. However, controversy has emerged over the legal costs being incurred by the government.
In a letter last week, the Government Legal Department notified the GLP that its estimated costs for defending the Public First case would be “in the region of £500,000 to £600,000”.
If the GLP loses the case, it could be made to pay those costs in addition to its own. Its director, Jolyon Maugham QC, argues the costs are excessive, pointing to two other recent judicial review cases in which the government’s costs were less than £200,000.
“The government has in-house solicitors and can employ barristers at low rates, but here money has been no object,” he said. “Such costs have a deterrent effect, to scare people off challenging them in the courts; it is another attempt by the government to remove itself from a layer of accountability.”
Last week a judge, Mrs Justice O’Farrell, gave permission to the GLP to pursue another judicial review claim relating to a government contract with the firm Hanbury Strategy, which also has connections with
Cummings and the
Conservative party.
The government has also defended that direct award as necessary and proper. O’Farrell stated in her ruling that the judicial review “raises serious issues of public importance that would otherwise not be scrutinised”.