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The High Court has found the government acted unlawfully when it gave a contract worth £560,000 to a company run by friends of the prime minister's former chief adviser, Dominic Cummings.
Campaigners took legal action against the Cabinet Office over the decision to use the company, following the start of the pandemic in March last year, and questioned the involvement of Mr Cummings.
Lawyers for the Good Law Project argued that he wanted focus group and communications support services work to be given to a firm whose bosses were his friends.
Delivering her ruling, Mrs Justice O'Farrell said: "The claimant is entitled to a declaration that the decision of 5 June 2020 to award the contract to Public First gave rise to apparent bias and was unlawful."
Ministers have denied any favouritism was shown towards the market research agency Public First.
The ruling is the first in a series of judicial review legal challenges brought by the Good Law Project (GLP) against government Covid-19 contracts awarded with no competitive tenders under emergency regulations.
The government has defended the cases determinedly, initially trying but failing to have them thrown out, then refusing to limit its costs. That has put the GLP, a not-for-profit organisation that raises money through crowdfunding to support its stated mission to “use the law to protect the interests of the public”, at severe financial risk if it lost and had to pay the government’s costs.
Public First is run by husband and wife policy specialists James Frayne and Rachel Wolf, both of whom previously worked with Cummings and Gove, the Cabinet Office minister. It was initially given a Cabinet Office contract last January, having been recommended to civil servants by Cummings and three other senior Johnson staff.
When the Guardian and OpenDemocracy first revealed the contract last July, the Cabinet Office said it was “nonsense” to suggest that Frayne and Wolf’s long association with Cummings was a factor in the decision.* However, when the case reached a hearing in February, Cummings confirmed in a witness statement that Frayne and Wolf were his long-term friends, and that he had been instrumental in Public First being given the Covid-19 work.
Re: Government acted unlawfully over firm's £560,000 contract
So what? Needs must when the devil drives and this Chinese release of covid sure has been the devil. It probably saved weeks if not months by avoiding the useless Civil Service procedures.
But, a contract for just over £500,000 ??
Such a fuss ??
When the track and trace cost about £20 Billion and only traced a
few hundred people. ??
I expect they were the only bidders for the contract !!