13 May 2021 — Good Law Project
Good Law Project has uncovered remarkable evidence that a Tory 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 the massive multi-billion PPE procurement process. 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.
7 May 2021 — Good Law Project
On 22 February, in the aftermath of the High Court finding that Matt Hancock had broken the law by failing to publish PPE contracts, Boris Johnson told Parliament this:
“the contracts are there on the record for everybody to see” and “all the details are on the record”
You can see both references in Hansard here.
But what he told Parliament was just not true. A large number of contracts – and details of those contracts – were neither “there for everybody to see” or “on the record”. Unlawfully their publication had been delayed.
29 April 2021 — Good Law Project
Good Law Project is today able to reveal the names of four more companies awarded contracts through the VIP lane: Clandeboye Agencies, P14 Medical, Luxe Lifestyle and Meller Designs.
Continue reading
26 April 2021 — Good Law Project
We are pleased to say that the Court has granted a Cost Capping Order in our judicial review of Government’s decision to hand a contract to Cummings’ pals at Hanbury without any competition. We will now be able to fight this case to its conclusion.
23 April 2021 — Good Law Project
Explosive emails revealed in a hearing on our legal challenge over direct awards of PPE contracts show civil servants raising the alarm that they were “drowning in VIP requests” from political connections that do not have “the correct certification or pass due diligence”.
20 April 2021 — Good Law Project
We already knew that Boris Johnson had misled Parliament when he insisted in February 2021 that all COVID contracts were now “on the record”. Now we’ve uncovered a new contract that makes further nonsense of that claim.
9 April 2021 — Good Law Project
Last week, the High Court granted permission to advance our case against Government for its award of contracts to Abingdon Health for rapid antibody tests. The deal with Abingdon Health has been marred by controversy since the very beginning, with Government suppressing reports that raised the alarm around the effectiveness of the tests and ignoring their own legal advice on the lawfulness of the contracts.
28 March 2021 — Good Law Project
We are pleased to announce that our judicial review with Runnymede of the Government’s practice of handing public sector jobs to its mates without open recruitment has been granted permission. We will have our day in Court.
17 March 2021 — Good Law Project
This week’s Panorama gave us the extraordinary tale of a dog food supplier turned PPE broker bagging herself millions acting as a ‘bridge’ for a Hong Kong supplier. Details of the largest contract – worth £178m – came to light only after the BBC’s probing prompted the Government to publish.
5 March 2021 — Good Law Project
3 days after the High Court ruled Government had acted unlawfully by failing to publish Covid contracts, Boris Johnson stood up in the House of Commons and reassured MPs and the public that all Covid-related contracts were “on the record”. However, the final Order handed down by the Judge today shows that what the Prime Minister told the House was not true.
4 March 2021 — Good Law Project
The law of libel has been reformed to make it harder for those who say they have been defamed to win in court. But the world the law envisages is not always the real world.
In the real world, the costs of defending libel proceedings are prohibitive for all except the wealthy. And the financial stress of defending a claim can be unbearable. The consequence is that the threat of defamation proceedings can be used to harass those who seek to speak truth to wealth and power. And they can be, and are, used to force the withdrawal – and sometimes the humiliating withdrawal – of statements which are true or at the very least a reasonable opinion.
24 February 2021 — Good Law Project
We are pleased to be able to tell you that the Court has granted a cost-capping order in our judicial review over the award of huge PPE contracts, without advertisement or competition, to Pestfix (a pest control company), Ayanda (an opaque private fund owned through a tax haven) and Clandeboye (a confectionery wholesaler).
22 February 2021 — Good Law Project
Tomorrow, the High Court will hear our application for a cost capping order in our judicial review of Government’s decision to award huge PPE contracts to questionable counterparties.
19 February 2021 — Good Law Project
The High Court has ruled “The Secretary of State acted unlawfully by failing to comply with the Transparency Policy” and that “there is now no dispute that, in a substantial number of cases, the Secretary of State breached his legal obligation to publish Contract Award Notices within 30 days of the award of contracts.” We have won the judicial review we brought alongside Debbie Abrahams MP, Caroline Lucas MP, and Layla Moran MP.
11 February 2021 — Good Law Project
Correspondence from Government shows it plans to claim a staggering £500k-600k in costs for a one day hearing of a judicial review challenge to a contract awarded by Dominic Cummings to his friends at Public First. The higher figure is more than the total value of the Public First contract of £564k.
28 January 2021 — Good Law Project
Correspondence with Government has revealed they expect to spend a staggering £1 million defending our judicial review of their decisions to award contracts criticised by the NAO. This is a sum unprecedented in our lawyers’ experience of judicial review proceedings. We can’t but wonder whether they are trying to scare us off – using the bottomless public purse to avoid accountability to the public.
20 January 2021 — Good Law Project
The UK now has the highest COVID-19 death rate of anywhere in the world. As we try and make sense of how we got our response so wretchedly wrong, just how significant will Government’s abandonment of transparency and proper process prove to be?
22 November 2020 — Good Law Project
Kate Bingham heads up Britain’s vaccine task force. She’s a venture capitalist with no public health experience, married to a Conservative minister. Dido Harding leads the Test and Trace system. She has no public health experience and is the wife of a Conservative MP. Mike Coupe, is head of COVID-19 testing, and has – you guessed it – no public health experience. The list goes on.
18November 2020 — Good Law Project
Today, the National Audit Office has released a damning report into Government procurement practices. It confirms what we have been saying for months. Government failed to manage conflicts of interest, dished out public money to deeply unsuitable companies, and has improperly shied away from proper scrutiny.
9 November 2020 — Good Law Project
Our challenge to Government’s decision to hide COVID-19 spending has led it to disclose that the Department of Health has handed £17 billion worth of COVID-19 contracts to private companies since April. Fresh analysis by Tussell reveals Government has failed to publish details of £4.4billion of these contracts. Continue reading
The New Dark Age 