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The Good Law Project

Tory voters clearly don’t mind voting for greed and corruption, they’ve been doing it for years! What is a matter of concern is that greed and corruption have become so popular that the other parties do not see any gain in challenging it. We seem to be living in a time when greed and corruption is just accepted, its one of those things (shrug), it’s always been with us (shrug), like racism it’s not nice, but hey, whaddaya do?

Yes but conversely it did make me wonder what kind of person welcomed Galloway's presence and who they were. It will be interesting how many of his 8000 would have been Labour votes. The result was obviously far from "good", but given the Brexit fragmentation of Labour, the obvious attempt by Galloway to further split the Labour vote and a media campaign bigging up the possibility of a Tory gain - I think they did pretty well to hold it.
 
Yes but conversely it did make me wonder what kind of person welcomed Galloway's presence and who they were. It will be interesting how many of his 8000 would have been Labour votes. The result was obviously far from "good", but given the Brexit fragmentation of Labour, the obvious attempt by Galloway to split the Labour vote and a media campaign bigging up the possibility of a Tory gain - I think they did pretty well to hold it.
Not denying that Leadbeater did well, she was impressive in handling the homophobic thug last week. Also a good thing that Labour won.

But that doesn’t mask other concerns. You are of course absolutely right in that we can’t tell why people voted for Galloway, but his vote does raise questions

There were also a worrying number of far right parties in that election, English Democrats, For Britain, CPA, Heritage and of course UKIP. None of them got many votes, and they likely won’t be there in a GE, but worrying all the same.
 
New transparency effort underway:

Boris Johnson, Matt Hancock and Lord Bethell have all been reportedly using private email accounts or WhatApp for Government business, discussing matters of national importance - from the spread of Covid-19 in care homes to the award of lucrative Government contracts.

But why would Ministers choose to use personal accounts rather than official channels?

An email exchange between senior officials about a legal case being brought by Good Law Project over a controversial contract is perhaps revealing. The senior official explains that because Matt Hancock conducted his duties as Health Minister using his private email, they think this means there would be a “substantial” threshold for civil servants to request access to his emails to check if they should be disclosed to the Court.

They seem to believe this is a loophole to avoid scrutiny. If politicians think they can evade oversight from the Courts or dodge Freedom of Information requests by using private email and WhatsApp, the question becomes: what have they got to hide?

Government does have a policy in place about the use of private email, but we don’t think it is fit for purpose - not least because it fails to set out when and why it would ever be acceptable for politicians to use their own accounts. And it seems unlikely the policy is being followed in any event, because there’s no evidence that steps are generally being taken to ensure that information held by Ministers on private emails or WhatsApp is recorded on Government systems.

We don’t just think this situation is wrong, we believe it’s unlawful. It flies in the face of Government’s legal obligations to preserve official records, and undermines its ability to comply with Freedom of Information requests and the duty of candour required by the Courts.

We are taking legal action. If we are successful, we could force Government to put in place proper policies to close this accountability gap for good. If you believe that Government business should be conducted transparently and would like to support this legal challenge, you can do so here.

Thank you,

Jo Maugham
Director of Good Law Project
 
Interesting to see Crooked Cameron’s Greensil shilling-fee finally revealed; he was getting paid £29k per day/£1m per year to try and dip/siphon into our tax revenue (GLP on Twitter).

PS The whole GLP Twitter account is worth reading/following as they seem to be moving into social areas now exposing human rights issues in state childcare etc.
 
The only time the words ‘Michael Gove’ and ‘appealing’ have ever been used in a sentence. Basically everyone’s least favourite vulcanised shitweasel is looking to waste a shed load more of our tax money defending the indefensible:

“The statement issued by Downing Street when Michael Gove lost the Public First case (“We welcome the judgment”) might almost have made you think he had won. He didn’t of course – and the finding he had broken the law by awarding a contract to friends of Dominic Cummings was a powerful vindication of Good Law Project’s analysis of the Government’s attitude to public money as “institutionalised cronyism”.

In any event, Mr Gove has now revealed the truth of who actually won in the High Court by deciding to appeal the decision. You can read the (highly critical) decision of Lord Justice Coulson giving him permission here.

We think his decision to spend more public money on an appeal is likely to be driven by a desire to postpone a further embarrassing loss in a separate challenge we are bringing. We are challenging another lucrative contract awarded to allies of Michael Gove, this time to a company called Hanbury. It was due to be heard later this month but will now be delayed.

However, the appeal gives us a chance to plan to revivify the arguments we ran below that there was time for a proper competitive tender process and/or no need to give such a long and valuable contract without any tender process.

All of that having been said, we have to recognise Government spent an extraordinary £500,000+ on a one day hearing below - approximately twice what we managed to raise to fight and win the case. With that in mind, we have decided to reopen our crowdfunding page.

Thank you,

Jo Maugham
Director of Good Law Project”
 
Predictably the Conservative government is trying to mark its own homework, ring-fence Hancock, and conceal systemic corruption and ongoing theft of our tax revenue (BBC). Hopefully GLP will continue to challenge.
 
“Following the revelations that disgraced former Health Secretary Matt Hancock and Health Minister Lord Bethell used private email accounts for Government business, our lawyers wrote to Government lawyers asking them to confirm they had searched the private email accounts of Ministers for material relevant to our PPE procurement challenges.

We received an extraordinary response from Government.

In it Government admits for the first time that as well as Hancock and Bethell - Trade Minister Greg Hands and the PPE Tsar, Lord Deighton - the Tory Peer directly appointed by Boris Johnson and responsible for coordinating the multi-billion pound procurement process - were using private email accounts.

But still, it refuses to search those accounts.

We are left with the farcical situation of Government behaving like the three wise monkeys, declining even to look at what business private email accounts were used to conduct.

How can Government lawyers be sure they have complied with their duty to put their cards face up on the table when they won't even look at their cards? We have the prospect of highly partial disclosure on VIP contracts worth hundreds of millions or billions of pounds.

Government has also so far also refused to confirm that relevant emails in Ministers' personal accounts will be included in the future public inquiry.

The Government is shaping up to be as evasive as possible. But we won’t back down. You can support our fight for full disclosure by donating to the legal challenge.

Donate
Thank you

Jo Maugham
Director of Good Law Project”
 
From GLP Facebook feed: Conservative government using public tax money for political polling:

“Good Law Project had a court hearing last week in connection with our challenge to the award of a lucrative public contract to associates of Michael Gove and Dominic Cummings at Hanbury without competition.

Documents we can now disclose show that Hanbury, under the instruction of the Cabinet Office, were given taxpayers’ money to conduct ‘political polling’ on key opposition figures, including Keir Starmer and Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan.

The decision to spend public money polling on opposition politicians left civil servants deeply, and rightly, uncomfortable. One said on email: ‘hanbury measure attitude towards political figures, which they shouldn’t do using government money, but they have been asked to and it’s a battle that i think is hard to fight’.

Documents unearthed in the course of our hearing also include this March 2020 email from Dominic Cummings to civil servants demanding approval is given ‘immediately’ for Hanbury to commence polling work, adding: ‘Anybody in CABOFF whines tell them i ordered it from PM’.

News of Hanbury’s involvement was not well received. One civil servant wrote: ‘this all makes me really uncomfortable. ben warner wants us to spend £110k of public money per month with the agency who were behind vote leave who have no mainstream polling experience.’

The evidence also shows Dominic Cumming’s close ally and former No.10 advisor Ben Warner (another Vote Leave veteran) was directing civil servants to his private WhatsApp rather than his official email address. In one email to civil servants, he claims: ‘often its easier to catch me over WhatsApp than email.’ Needless to say, Government hasn’t disclosed any of Mr Warner’s WhatsApp messages.

This money doesn’t belong to the Tories. They shouldn’t be spending it working out how to win elections. It’s public money – from taxes we all work hard to pay. And it’s a kind of theft for them to misuse it for the purposes of the Conservative Party.

It is only with your support that we can continue to hold Government to account. If you would like to make a donation, you can do so here.”
 
Good Law Project had a court hearing last week in connection with our challenge to the award of a lucrative public contract to associates of Michael Gove and Dominic Cummings at Hanbury without competition.

Documents we can now disclose show that Hanbury, under the instruction of the Cabinet Office, was given taxpayers’ money to conduct 'political polling'on key opposition figures, including Keir Starmer and Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan.

The decision to spend public money polling on opposition politicians left civil servants deeply, and rightly, uncomfortable. One said on email: 'hanbury measure attitude towards political figures, which they shouldn’t do using government money, but they have been asked to and it’s a battle that i think is hard to fight.'

Documents unearthed in the course of our hearing also include this March 2020 email from Dominic Cummings to civil servants demanding approval is given 'immediately' for Hanbury to commence polling work, adding 'Anybody in CABOFF whines tell them i ordered it from PM.'

News of Hanbury’s involvement was not well-received. One civil servant wrote: 'this all makes me really uncomfortable. ben warner wants us to spend £110k of public money per month with the agency who were behind vote leave who have no mainstream polling experience.'

The evidence also shows Dominic Cummings' close ally and former No.10 advisor Ben Warner (another Vote Leave veteran) was directing civil servants to his private WhatsApp rather than his official email address. In one email to civil servants, he claims: 'often its easier to catch me over WhatsApp than email'. Needless to say, Government hasn’t disclosed any of Mr Warner’s WhatsApp messages.

This money doesn’t belong to the Tories. They shouldn’t be spending it working out how to win elections. It’s public money – from taxes we all work hard to pay. And it’s a kind of theft for them to misuse it for the purposes of the Conservative Party.

Thank you,

Jo Maugham - Good Law Project

Donate
 
It really is beyond belief. This is money we give in taxation for state infrastructure and services. I do not pay my taxes so these thieving shits can stick it in their back pockets or use it for party political means. It is huge sums of money too, literally £bns stolen/misappropriated. One can easily view it as whole towns or cities paying for nothing beyond Tory criminality rather than the schools, hospitals, roads, social services, security etc the money was taken for.
 
This week on Crooked Thieving Tories:

Forget about Greensill. Only last year, a Minister brought a former Chair of the Tory Party, a man who now runs a lobbying firm, into the heart of Government to work on PPE procurement. Having got his feet under the table that former Chair lobbied to win PPE contracts for at least one, and possibly a number of, clients of his lobbying firm.

The Tory Minister is Lord Bethell. The former Tory Party Chair is Lord Feldman – once described as David Cameron’s oldest and best friend – who worked for Bethell from 23 March to 15 May 2020. And his huge lobbying firm is Tulchan, whose client list includes Bunzl Healthcare.

Bunzl was given a £22.6m PPE contract by the Department for Health without any competition in April 2020, smack bang in the middle of the period Feldman was working with Bethell. And we now know that:

  • Feldman was involved in the award of this contract. Bunzl had been removed from the Department for Health’s ‘approved suppliers list’ – and Feldman got them back on. An email from Feldman to Bunzl on 22 March 2020 states that he was acting as “an unpaid advisor to Matthew Hancock at the department of health…but that there have been some historic issues which mean that you have been removed from the approved suppliers list. I would like to remedy that as soon as possible”.
  • On the same day, he emailed Bunzl, copying in Andrew Wood whom he describes as “the person leading the accelerated procurement process in Cabinet Office” and said “I have spoken to him [Andy Wood] about Bunzl and the opportunity for you to supply the UK Government with equipment. He will be in touch”.
  • And then, several days later, when Bunzl thought the deal was not progressing quickly enough, it asked Feldman to intervene – which he did. On 25 March Feldman wrote directly to the line manager of the official dealing with Bunzl, encouraging him to expedite the contract award process: “We need to move quickly”.
We brought judicial review proceedings and we are pleased to tell you that the High Court has granted us permission to bring our judicial review on the first three of our Grounds (breach of the duties of transparency and equal treatment, apparent bias, and breach of the Defendant’s own policies in respect of conflicts of interest). You can see its decision here.

On the fourth ground, which concerns other Lord Feldman conflicts of interest, the Court refused permission but we are ‘renewing’ our request before the Court of Appeal.

Public office is for public service, not private gain.

It is only with your support that we can continue to hold Government to account. If you would like to make a donation, you can do so here
.”
 
I got a different update from them today:

Lord Bethell is the Health Minister responsible for overseeing the award of Covid contracts. His time as Health Minister has been mired in controversy: from failing to declare meetings with firms that won huge Government contracts to using his personal email address to conduct Government business. Good Law Project has a particular interest in the role he played in the controversial award of lucrative contracts to Abingdon Health.

Last week in Court we argued against the Government's attempts to apply blanket redactions to documents relating to the Abingdon Health contracts. We were successful: an important step towards transparency.

But the hearing uncovered something more alarming. In sworn evidence, Government admitted that some of Lord Bethell's dealings with Abingdon had been conducted via WhatsApp or text message, and were held only on his private mobile phone. And if that was the case for Abingdon, why not other VIPs too?

What’s more, in December last year, Lord Bethell was told his mobile phone would be searched for documents relating to this case. Just weeks later, it seems, he ‘replaced’ his phone because, Government lawyers say, it was ‘broken’. They are not now sure it will be possible to retrieve WhatsApp and text messages.

Lord Bethell has overseen the award of billions of pounds of public contracts. Information revealing how these contracts came to be awarded may now be lost - or have been destroyed.

During the hearing, the Judge expressed alarm about Government’s failure to preserve evidence and insisted the ‘Order’ he made at the conclusion of the hearing refer to Government’s obligation to preserve relevant documents.

Our lawyers have written to Government to demand answers. When did Bethell learn his phone would be searched? When did he report it as broken? What attempts were made to save crucial information from his old phone? If not, why not?

This Government seems allergic to scrutiny: redacting some documents, hiding others from public scrutiny via ‘confidentiality rings’, permitting Ministers to award billions in public money via private as well as official channels, and failing to protect evidence from destruction.

We are taking action to close this accountability gap. If you’re in a position to do so, you can donate here:

Donate
Thank you,

Jo Maugham - Good Law Project
 
Can the platform providers not be compelled to provide copies? Destroying the phone doesn’t strike me as sophisticated cover up.
 
Can the platform providers not be compelled to provide copies? Destroying the phone doesn’t strike me as sophisticated cover up.
WhatsApp comms are encrypted at source. The service provider has no way to decrypt. But if the user’s phone is just replacing a broken one, I’m not clear why them reinstalling WhatsApp on it wouldn’t simply copy the messages across, either from the old phone or from the App server.
 
WhatsApp comms are encrypted at source. The service provider has no way to decrypt. But if the user’s phone is just replacing a broken one, I’m not clear why them reinstalling WhatsApp on it wouldn’t simply copy the messages across, either from the old phone or from the App server.

Transferring messages when switching from Android to iOS can be problematic- there are dodgy workarounds, but you’d need to use them while you still have both handsets.

So if it suddenly transpires that LB switched from Android to iOS, well it was already implausible, but the plausometer needle would surely break.
 


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