Latest update:
“Good Law Project is now able to reveal the names of six more companies awarded PPE contracts through the controversial ’VIP’ fast-track lane for associates of ministers and advisers. These six firms landed nearly half a billion pounds of public contracts - all without competition - and were uncovered in documents prised from Government in the course of our litigation:
The six companies revealed here are in addition to the six other ‘VIPs’ previously revealed by Good Law Project. In April we revealed documents showing P14 Medical, Luxe Lifestyle, and Meller Designs were fast-tracked down the ‘VIP’ route alongside Pestfix and Ayanda. P14 Medical, run by a Tory donor and ex-Tory councillor, was awarded £276m in PPE contracts. Meller Designs, run by another large Tory donor, David Meller, won more than £160m of PPE contracts. Luxe Lifestyle, a tiny recently-formed company with no staff and no experience in buying and selling PPE, was awarded a contract worth £26m after being referred to the VIP lane by an MP.
- Uniserve Limited is a logistics firm controlled by Iain Liddell. Prior to the pandemic the firm had no experience in supplying PPE, yet the firm landed a staggering £300m+ in PPE contracts from the DHSC and an eye watering £572m deal to provide freight services for the supply of PPE. The company shares the same address as Cabinet Minister Julia Lopez MP and is based in her constituency. Here they are together.
- Draeger Safety UK Ltd which is a subsidiary of the Germany-based Draeger AG, landed a direct award contract in July 2020 to supply FFP3 masks valued at £87m.
- Urathon Europe Limited, a Wiltshire based supplier of wheelchair accessories, was handed two contracts worth £74m to supply face masks. Correspondence released during our recent PPE hearing revealed the Urathon contracts were ‘escalated through VIP Channel’.
- First Aid For Sport Limited, SanaClis, and Global United Trading and Sourcing PTE Ltd were awarded contracts from the DHSC worth a combined total of £28.6m.
This followed our scoop last December that Government had handed PPE Medpro, a firm linked to an associate of a Conservative peer with mystery investors, £200m of PPE contracts via the 'high-priority lane.'
It’s been months of battle to get here. Why is Government so determined to keep the names of VIPs hidden? At whose request did they get ushered through the VIP lane? Documents revealed during our High Court hearing last month show civil servants were “drowning” in referrals from politically connected individuals, which were “consuming bandwidth to progressing viable opportunities”.
The NAO says 47 companies received PPE contracts after being referred to the VIP lane. Our investigations and cases have so far revealed the names of 12 of those companies.
With your help, we will get to the truth. The more people are aware, the more powerful we will be. Will you please share this update with your friends and family now?
Thank you,
Jo Maugham
Director of Good Law Project
Only with your support can we continue to hold the Government to account. If you are in a position to do so, you can make a donation here: Donate”
This looks like potential dynamite (Twitter). It really is time this bunch of crooks and shysters were brought down. Maybe the Serious Fraud Office can help…
Another update:
“A Number 10 spokesperson has explicitly denied that Government Ministers have used private email addresses:
"Both the former health secretary and Lord Bethell understand the rules around personal email usage and only ever conducted government business through their departmental email addresses".
This is impossible to square with statements made by the Second Permanent Secretary in meeting minutes published by The Sunday Times. Those minutes clearly state that disgraced former Health Secretary Matt Hancock “corresponds only with private office via a gmail account”.
It is also impossible to square with emails we hold.
On 19 April 2020 Lord Feldman (who you’ll recall lobbied to win PPE contracts for at least one of his clients while working at DHSC) emailed Lord Bethell on his private @ jbethell .com address about Covid-19 test kits:
Plainly this is government business. And plainly Lord Feldman, once co-Chair of the Conservative Party, was writing to James Bethell at his private email address on that government business. This is far from the only email we hold involving Lord Bethell’s private email address.
It is shocking to hear the Prime Minister, via his spokesperson, mislead the public.
Tomorrow we will give you jaw-dropping details of the type of business that was being conducted using private gmail addresses.
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Thank you,
Jo Maugham
Director of Good Law Project”
This is a story of corruption and the theft of taxpayer money and I’m at a loss to understand why Labour, and to a lesser extent the LD’s are not campaigning to push this up the news agenda. Labour, with the likes of Mandelson on board, should be able to get this story into the media.Another update:
“On Monday we published a short post, pointing out that the so-called “transparency” data - which is supposed to list all of the external meetings Ministers have - failed to mention a meeting on 1 April 2020 that Lord Bethell had with Abingdon shortly before his department awarded it the first of two contracts worth up to £87.5m in total.
The contracts - which Good Law Project is challenging in the High Court - are highly controversial not least because Government’s own lawyers advised they were unlawful.
Government blamed the missing meeting on an “admin error” and responded on Tuesday by publishing an updated list of the external meetings Lord Bethell had, including the 1 April meeting with Abingdon:
The problem is that the updated list is also wrong.
First, the updated list doesn’t make any mention of a meeting Matt Hancock had on 1 April 2020 with a group of would-be test suppliers.
We know that it took place because we have the emails.
Here is an invitation to a conference call at 5pm issued to “Excalibur Health” - no mention of this meeting appears in the so-called transparency data. We also know that other providers including Abingdon received the same invitation.
Indeed, it looks very much as though Matt Hancock had two meetings with Abingdon.
Here is a further email setting out that Matt Hancock wanted to join a second, follow-up, private call with Abingdon later that evening at 19.10.
The so-called transparency data, even in its revised form, fails to mention his attendance at either.
Government will, no doubt, say they made a second “admin error” in correcting the first “admin error”. And perhaps you are inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume it is merely gross, and repeated, incompetence.
But even the most sweetly trusting of us must wonder whether the real explanation is that this is a deliberate attempt to mislead the public as to the former Secretary of State’s involvement in the ill-fated and unlawful Abingdon deal.
Thank you,
Jo Maugham
Director of Good Law Project
Only with your support can we continue to hold the Government to account. If you are in a position to do so, you can make a donation here: Donate”
Hopefully they’ve got enough to get a result here…
Is the reason that it is not a big story because the other parties are complicit or at least sympathetic?
This is a story of corruption and the theft of taxpayer money and I’m at a loss to understand why Labour, and to a lesser extent the LD’s are not campaigning to push this up the news agenda. Labour, with the likes of Mandelson on board, should be able to get this story into the media.
Is the reason that it is not a big story because the other parties are complicit or at least sympathetic?
Do the people voting for Johnson care about a bit of corruption?
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?Do the people voting for Johnson care about a bit of corruption? Bit like Trump supporters, they probably think it makes them "smart".
Yes, a bit like asking a question about racism. If you ask people directly, are you against racism, overwhelmingly most people would say yes. But if you ask people if they’re against specific manifestations of racism, you’ll get a different answer. We saw this clearly around the booing of sportspeople taking the knee. If the question is, Do you support anti racism? the answer is an unambiguous yes. If the question is do you support a specific gesture of supporting anti racism? the answer is more of a ‘well………..the thing is…….’depends on what activity they identify as corruption.
I suspect that if one asked a direct question about caring about corruption, then one answer might emerge. if one asked a question that describes a scenario then I suspect another answer might emerge