Thread by @JolyonMaugham

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.

When we originally sent our pre-action letter to the Government in relation to Ayanda - which you can read here goodlawproject.org/wp-content/upl… - we said that the price at the time the contract was awarded to Ayanda for Type IIR single use face masks was between 39-46p.

The Government wrote back to us saying our figures were incorrect. Prevailing market prices at the time were significantly higher being "approximately 59-64p per unit instead."

And, from the published Ayanda contract (see the second tweet in this thread), you can work out we paid 65p per IIR mask.

(If you look at the contract, you will also see that Ayanda was only obliged to make delivery to Shanghai Airport: in other words we had to pay to fly those IIR masks to the UK which will have cost tens of millions more.)

Remember, too, that not only were we buying these for delivery in China, but we were buying a vast quantity - 150m - on which we might expect a discount. Still, we paid Ayanda a per unit price of 65p (slightly higher than the 59-64p unit price Government said then prevailed.)

But what price was Government paying everyone else?

I have seen a copy of a leaked document which gives prices paid for IIR facemasks. The prices it gives "may" include logistics (i.e. they may be the higher prices for delivery in the UK rather than lower for delivery in China.)

And what that document shows is that the average price paid by Government for IIR masks in the UK on 29 April was not the 59-64p Government told us in correspondence but 41p (within the 39-46p we had stated in our letter).

150m masks multiplied by (even if you ignore volume discount and air-freight) an average overpayment of 24p per mask equals an (at least) £36m overpayment for these masks to an entity connected to Government.