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11-07-2020, 11:52 AM
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Firm with links to Gove and Cummings given Covid-19 contract without open tender

https://www.theguardian.com/politics...ut-open-tender

Research company owned by associates of senior Tory and PM’s adviser gets £840,000 job

The Cabinet Office has awarded an £840,000contract to research public opinion about government policies to a company owned by two long-term associates of Michael Gove and Dominic Cummings, without putting the work out for tender.

Public First, a small policy and research company in London, is run by James Frayne, whose work alongside Cummings – the prime minister’s senior adviser – dates back to a Eurosceptic campaign 20 years ago, and Rachel Wolf, a former adviser to Gove who co-wrote the Conservative party’s 2019 election manifesto.

The government justified the absence of a competitive tendering process, which would have enabled other companies to bid, under emergency regulations that allow services to be urgently commissioned in response to the Covid-19 crisis.

However, the Cabinet Office’s public record states that portions of the work, which involved focus group research, related to Brexit rather than Covid-19, a joint investigation by the Guardian and openDemocracy has established.

A Cabinet Office spokesman said this was because of bookkeeping methods, and insisted that, contrary to government records, all the focus group research done by Public First was related to the pandemic.
The full article is more illuminating about the "fiddle" .....

Rachel Reeves, the shadow Cabinet Office minister, said: “It beggars belief that the government’s desperate defence of handing a contract for daily focus groups on Covid-19 to longstanding friends of ministers is coincidence, and to blame clerical incompetence for the reference to the work on Brexit. They should come clean about the purpose of this project, why this company was chosen without it going to tender and publish the research findings and recommendations for people to see for themselves.”
It may on only be £840,000, small potatoes when compared to the Chancellor's £190,000,000, but nepotism stinks .....
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12-07-2020, 05:37 PM
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Re: Firm with links to Gove and Cummings given Covid-19 contract without open tender

It may be sheer coincidence but:

Dominic Cummings firm paid Vote Leave's AI firm £260,000

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world/us_and_canada

A private company owned and controlled by Dominic Cummings paid more than a quarter of a million pounds to the artificial intelligence firm that worked on the Vote Leave campaign.

The prime minister’s chief adviser is declining to explain the reason for the payments to Faculty, which were made in instalments over two years. Faculty also declined to say what they were for.

But the payments are likely to raise further questions about the relationship between Cummings and the data analytics firm he hired in 2016 to conduct data modelling around the EU referendum for Vote Leave.

Earlier this year, Faculty was installed at the heart of the government’s response to the coronavirus crisis, conducting data modelling to help senior decision-makers and other government officials respond to the pandemic.
More jobs for mates .....
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12-07-2020, 06:39 PM
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Re: Firm with links to Gove and Cummings given Covid-19 contract without open tender

More likely just a need to get something done without delay.
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18-07-2020, 02:37 PM
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Re: Firm with links to Gove and Cummings given Covid-19 contract without open tender

Bent as a nine-bob note.

But they'll get away with it . . . they always do.
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18-07-2020, 04:04 PM
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Re: Firm with links to Gove and Cummings given Covid-19 contract without open tender

Originally Posted by OldFogey ->
Bent as a nine-bob note.

But they'll get away with it . . . they always do.
Proof? Or just supposition.
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19-07-2020, 01:24 PM
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Re: Firm with links to Gove and Cummings given Covid-19 contract without open tender

Never mind the tender rules - £840k to test effectiveness of the Government's coronavirus messaging???! They are having a giraffe indeed!

This reportedly goes back to a deal on 3rd March formalised in writing on 5th June.

I'd love to know what they are doing for this vast sum that justifies crucial covid spend when we are in dire financial straits. Apparently something to do with focus groups around the country....given the communications we have seen it's been really worthwhile! Did they decide which 3 words to put on the front of the lectern? Or what?
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19-07-2020, 01:35 PM
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Re: Firm with links to Gove and Cummings given Covid-19 contract without open tender

Originally Posted by AnnieS ->
Never mind the tender rules - £840k to test effectiveness of the Government's coronavirus messaging???! They are having a giraffe indeed!

This reportedly goes back to a deal on 3rd March formalised in writing on 5th June.

I'd love to know what they are doing for this vast sum that justifies crucial covid spend when we are in dire financial straits. Apparently something to do with focus groups around the country....given the communications we have seen it's been really worthwhile! Did they decide which 3 words to put on the front of the lectern? Or what?
Actually £840k isn't a "big sum" any more and when it comes down to war gaming of something of the complexity of covid MIT's very reasonable indeed.

To put it sorta into context a rate of £500 + per hour plus expense at cost for a technical expert is to be expected for a job of this complexity and urgency.
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19-07-2020, 01:53 PM
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Re: Firm with links to Gove and Cummings given Covid-19 contract without open tender

Originally Posted by The Artful Todger ->
Actually £840k isn't a "big sum" any more and when it comes down to war gaming of something of the complexity of covid MIT's very reasonable indeed.

To put it sorta into context a rate of £500 + per hour plus expense at cost for a technical expert is to be expected for a job of this complexity and urgency.
It is a very big sum for consultancy services to set up "focus groups". Presumably these groups are now online so totally unclear where such cost is generated. I'd like to understand what the public are getting for this money. It's a year-long contract according to details published. Why do we (the public) need this?
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19-07-2020, 03:24 PM
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Re: Firm with links to Gove and Cummings given Covid-19 contract without open tender

Originally Posted by AnnieS ->
It is a very big sum for consultancy services to set up "focus groups". Presumably these groups are now online so totally unclear where such cost is generated. I'd like to understand what the public are getting for this money. It's a year-long contract according to details published. Why do we (the public) need this?
After retiring I picked up a few short term contracts to provide consultancy and in one case a consultancy group to undertake a "war gaming" exercise as part of the roll out stages for a telecommunications product.
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19-07-2020, 06:14 PM
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Re: Firm with links to Gove and Cummings given Covid-19 contract without open tender

I'm struggling to understand the link???
 
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