We are today seeking urgent clarification from the Government that it is not planning to fatally undermine the official Covid Inquiry. According to an article published by Bloomberg, the Government is trying to block essential information from being passed to the Inquiry.
Cressida Dick has finally confirmed that the Met Police will investigate the parties held in No 10 Downing Street and Whitehall after we initiated formal legal proceedings against them.
It’s not much fun being a Conservative backbench MP at the moment. No 10 is reportedly threatening them with the withdrawal of funding for their constituencies if they don’t toe the party line in Commons votes.
No 10 reportedly made these threats to force MPs to spare Tory MP Owen Paterson from suspension, after he broke parliamentary rules by lobbying for a private firm that paid him £100,000 a year. One backbencher said MPs were told “they would lose funding for their constituency” if they failed to vote with the Prime Minister.
Tomorrow, we’re in Court. The Government is appealing the High Court’s ruling that it acted unlawfully – that there was apparent bias – in its award of a contract to associates of Dominic Cummings and Michael Gove.
Late last night, Government published its list of the firms given red-carpet treatment in its lucrative ‘VIP’ lane – and the politicians and party donors who referred them.
Government was forced to release the names following a successful and long-running Freedom of Information battle by Good Law Project.
The UK may be the only democracy in the world without a written constitution – a ‘higher’ law or code to which all others must conform.
Until now, we haven’t seen the need for binding rules. We’ve relied on self-restraint. We’ve trusted politicians to behave themselves. We’ve assumed that only ‘good chaps’ – as Lord Hennessy memorably put it – will rise to high office. And those good chaps won’t need to be told how to behave. Being good chaps, they will know what the rules are and they will obey them.
But what happens if the people running the show aren’t good chaps?
For months, Government has been refusing to hand over evidence in our challenge concerning Abingdon Health, the testing company awarded £85 million worth of contracts without competition. Yesterday we took Government to Court to fight for this evidence – and we had a good day.
Cash for the Tories buys you access. And access means cash from the public purse. That’s the abysmal two-step that channels public cash to Party donors.
21 June 2021 — GoodLaw Project
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:
Continue reading
7 June 2021 — Good Law Project
Over the weekend the Mail on Sunday reported, quite explicitly, that our founder, Jo Maugham, is being “targeted by Ministers”. What is suggested is that Good Law Project is somehow “abusing” crowdfunding. But no evidence is given in support of that contention.
And it is false.
28 May 2021 — Good Law Project
Government gets a bona fide PPE offer from a would be supplier. The company has sourced the PPE, submitted a bid and passed through the technical checks. They’re close to signing on the dotted line. But at the eleventh hour they get dropped. Instead, Government buys the same thing from someone else. Someone who came in later but with close connections to Cabinet Ministers – and at an eye watering price.
26 May 2021 — Good Law Project
What should the campaigner do if he hears from an insider that a formal response to judicial review proceedings is “a work of fiction Government has created”? Should he close his ears? And if he is sent documents supporting that proposition, what then? What should he do if those documents show Ministers acting in ways their own lawyers – and external lawyers after that – told them was unlawful?
19 May 2021 — Good Law Project
Today the High Court heard our lawyers detail waste, mismanagement – and yet more special treatment for politically connected companies placed in the “VIP” Lane.
The New Dark Age 