A firm specialising in vitamin boosts that hired Boris Johnson's half-brother hoping he can "open doors" is holding talks with Government about Covid testing, which we know (only because of leaks) Govt plans to spend over £100bn on. mirror.co.uk/news/politics/…
We at @GoodLawProject have four judicial reviews afoot against inexplicable procurement decisions Government has made and is about to launch a further three, including one against the £100bn+ Moonshot programme. Those judicial reviews share some alarming features.
Government has failed to put any of the contracts out to open tender so we can check on how it is spending public money. It has, contrary to its own guidance, refused to publish the contracts and, contrary to the law, details of the contracts.
A number of these contracts - even without publication I am currently aware of six but there are almost certainly many more - have been entered into privately with long time associates of Dominic Cummings.
In each of the judicial reviews we have brought Govt argues we cannot challenge its actions because we do not have standing. I have sworn a witness statement explaining the many conversations I have had with businesses who fear commercial reprisals if they challenge Government.
In the one judicial review we have so far brought against Govt for secretly entering into a contract with Cummings' associate - we expect to bring another next week and this is true of that further judicial review - Govt has not even attempted to argue its actions were lawful.
I have correspondence from serious people - senior academics, business people and lawyers - making allegations I consider plausible of price gouging and corruption including, in respect of a very valuable contract, an explicit demand for a bribe.
I have worked hard to put this material into the public domain - and the person responsible for the price gouging allegation is talking to a journalist I introduced him to - but those who come to me are very fearful of what will happen to them if their name emerges.
I also speak privately to senior current and ex-civil servants, some of whom work in highly respected think tanks, who share my alarm about what is happening in Government but prefer not to go public with their fears.
On the £100bn+ Moonshot programme - more below - widely pilloried by the scientific community Government says the project is both (1) too urgent for open tender but (2) insufficiently urgency for it to need to respond in accordance with court timetables. crowdjustice.com/case/operation…
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
First, I am not a Government MP. This matters because the Government has also sorts of powers to bully and coerce that normal citizens do not. That's why its conduct is subject to special safeguards and scrutiny - not that Hodges' bottom rag would know anything about that.
My second point illustrates the first. I did go to Court because the Met initially refused to investigate Partygate. It's a form of scrutiny that public bodies, like the Met, are rightly subject to, because of their enormous power.
A few points on the so-called tax gap, the difference between the tax HMRC actually collects and its estimate of the total tax due. 🧵
First, it does not even purport to calculate sums lost through what tax wonks call Base Erosion and Profit Shifting - broadly speaking, tax dodging by multinationals.
Second, as @RichardJMurphy has pointed out, there is a pretty big curiosity in that our economy is worth ~£2,300 bn; most estimates give the size of the shadow economy as ~10%+; but the tax gap for the shadow economy is washers. (Only some of that VAT gap is 'shadow'.)
Eighteen months ago, with a group of MPs, we wrote to the @ChtyCommission about the so-called 'Global Warming Policy Foundation', a pro global heating organisation you are forced to match fund with tax subsidies because it is treated as a charity. 🧵goodlawproject.org/mps-call-for-i…
GWPF has been described by the London School of Economics as "the UK’s main club for climate change deniers" which accused it of "peddling false claims." lse.ac.uk/granthaminstit…
The idea its sinister activities are charitable, for the public good, so that we must subsidise them through our taxes is absurd. In our letter to @ChtyCommission we pointed out that every one of its outputs including celebrating burning fossil fuels was pro global heating.
If you want to know how power works in the UK contrast the press interest in (1) the £1,500 of capital gains tax Angela Rayner is said to have evaded with (2) the tens of millions Lord Ashcroft denies having evaded. 🧵
Lord Ashcroft set up the Bermuda based Punta Gordon trust. A financial statement in the leaked Paradise Papers reported it as holding assets of $450m. But the Paradise papers didn't just reveal the value of the trust.
They also revealed that Appleby, a firm of solicitors that was acting as trustee of the trust, complained vigorously about the fact that Lord Ashcroft dealt with some of the assets in the trust and then invited the trustees to rubber stamp his dealings.
The Charity Commission has, with extraordinary haste, dismissed our complaint about the Institute for Economic Affairs. It said: "the Commission... will rarely intervene when allegations of political bias are made, from whatever angle" - a troubling gloss on Charity law which we are considering with our lawyers.
Imo, the Charity Commission cannot properly be understood as a regulator. Its purposes include the channelling of public money to organisations friendly to the Tory party. And the regulatory harassment of those whose activities are inconvenient to the Tory Party.
Found myself debating @benhabib6 on BBC on whether Reform is Far Right. He didn't repeat @TiceRichard's threat to sue those who said so. But he did intimate I might hear from Farage's lawyers for saying I thought he was anti-semitic (cited by me as a reason Reform is Far Right).
The other reasons I gave: Reform's desire that the UK join Russia and Greece after a military coup in becoming only the third country ever to find intolerable the international human rights norms in the Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.