By letter of 7 September 2020, Matt Hancock via his lawyers told us "this year [PPE] contracts worth over £11 billion have been awarded to date" had been awarded by DHSC.
On 4 August 2020, Matt Hancock via his lawyers told us "the PPE buying programme... is no longer operating."
By regulation 50 of the Public Procurement Regulations the Government has to - it has no discretion - publish contract award notices within 30 days.
Analysis by @Tussell_UK shows that in this financial year only £7.7bn of PPE contracts have been published (a full list of all £7.7bn can be seen here rebrand.ly/DHSC-covid-con…).
Over 30 days - the time limit for publication - have passed since we were told that over £11bn of contracts have been awarded. And know that the PPE programme ceased by 4 August 2020. But only £7.7bn of contracts have been published. So where is the missing £3.3bn, @MattHancock?
You can help us find out by donating here crowdjustice.com/case/fight-for…

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More from @JolyonMaugham

13 Oct
Yesterday I showed how, on Govt's own figures, it overpaid a politically connected PPE supplier by £36m+ for IIR facemasks.

In fact, if you look at the contract as a whole, which included FFP2 facemasks, the overpayment was much higher. I'll come back to that in a moment.
But, first, bear in mind that although contracts were awarded by DHSC the key triaging of bids and supplier due diligence was undertaken by Cabinet Office.

That casts a certain pall on explanations like this - provided by Ayanda to journalists - about the role of Andrew Mills. Image
I will return in the coming days to some correlations between highly generous pricing and relationships between the beneficiaries of that pricing and key figures in Cabinet Office.
Read 12 tweets
12 Oct
I am hugely grateful to everyone who has contributed to our crowdfunder in which - along with @LaylaMoran, @CarolineLucas and @Debbie_abrahams - we are seeking to force Government to come clean about the (more than) £3bn of PPE contracts they are keeping under wraps. /1
We have lifted the stretch target to £75k. This very substantial sum is also considerably less than our exposure to costs should we fight and lose. But it is also considerably more than it will cost us if we succeed (and we believe we should). /2
I am afraid - although I have been crowdfunding for over four years - I have not yet found any comfortable way to balance this equation. Even where you can be confident any surplus will be used for good reasons it is sub-optimal for us to raise more than we need. /3
Read 6 tweets
12 Oct
Last night, I said that I was aware of evidence DHSC had been paying higher prices for PPE to connected suppliers. And that I was working to put that evidence into the public domain. We are in possession of a lot of evidence that suggests as much, but I can share the following.
The Ayanda contract was entered into on 29 April 2020 (you can read it here contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/Notice/Attachm…). It was entered into by Ayanda Capital Limited, owned through a particularly ugly tax haven, by the Horlick family.
However, the original offer came from Prospermill Limited, a boxfresh £100 company that had never traded and which was owned by then Board of Trade advisor (now departed), Breitbart, Liz Truss and Hard Brexit enthusiast, Andrew Mills. Image
Read 11 tweets
9 Oct
If you might allow me the analogy, having two year waiting lists before you can be assessed to see whether you should be prescribed puberty blockers is like having five month waiting lists for an abortion. It's effectively a denial of treatment.
The consequence of denying safe, properly regulated access to puberty blockers is the same as the consequence of denying safe, properly regulated access to abortion. It drives those who need that care to riskier providers and massively increases the dangers to them.
And every attempt to remove a provider from the field - @TaviAndPort and now @GenderGP - makes life more dangerous for those who need that care. It will cause - directly and indirectly - massive harm to children.
Read 4 tweets
8 Oct
The effect of making it impossible for transgender kids to access regulated wrap-around healthcare in the UK was to drive them and their families to piece together bits and pieces of healthcare from across jurisdictions and administer it with the help of YouTube videos...
... this is plainly more dangerous for those kids and their families.

But for the hobbyists who treat the bodies of transgender kids as a battleground for their political beliefs - who think they know better than actual experts - this is not enough. They are now working to...
... disrupt that patchwork (which for many in the UK includes @GenderGP) of care.

The inevitable result of this is that transgender children and their families will access treatment (readily available throughout the liberal world with the exception of the UK) via the dark web...
Read 6 tweets
6 Oct
History tells us that denying safe, properly regulated access to abortion causes women to seek out dangerous unregulated access. In the UK we effectively deny safe, properly regulated access to reversible puberty blockers. So children seek out other access which is less safe.
And it's not only that trans children's access to reversible puberty blockers carries unnecessary risk. It's also that their difficulties in accessing blockers drive some to move more quickly to Stage III (after therapy and blockers) of partially irreversible cross-sex hormones.
If you don't have reversible 'blockers' during puberty the shape and form of your body changes in ways that are both highly distressing to you and physically irreversible. So the families of trans children I speak to don't feel they have a choice about taking reversible blockers.
Read 5 tweets

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