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Jo Maugham QC

12 Nov, 5 tweets, 2 min read

In which a £75million contract was awarded without competition on the basis of profoundly flawed research. And when confronted with evidence of those flaws Government tried to suppress publication of that evidence. crowdjustice.com/case/abingdon-…

You can read more about the Abingdon Health debacle here. (And there is more to come tomorrow.) theguardian.com/world/2020/nov…

@deeksj

It's worth reading this piece from back in August by the redoubtable @deeksj about flaws in the Abingdon tests. This Govt has a rather worrying habit of presenting misleading data to support the businesses it gives hugely valuable public contracts to. 🤔 theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

"Further evaluations of the Abingdon test are apparently ongoing, but no details are available so we have no way of scrutinising them. Such secrecy destroys trust. Restoring scientific credibility will require urgent publication of the protocols and reports for these studies."

You can expect to see, very shortly indeed, peer reviewed papers about the Abingdon tests. Questions will need to be asked about why Sir John Bell described the test as “truly amazing”.

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More from @JolyonMaugham

Jo Maugham QC

@JolyonMaugham

12 Nov

@GoodLawProject

Absolutely staggering. After @GoodLawProject sued DHSC for unlawfully procuring PPE from Pestfix, DHSC put pressure on the Health and Safety Executive to lie and say that Pestfix PPE had passed safety checks. bbc.co.uk/news/uk-548977…

Government entered into 11 contracts with tiny pest control specialist Pestfix. Government has (unlawfully) failed to publish five. The six we can see sum to about a third of a billion pounds. At least one was bought on the basis of fake documents.

We will, of course, be drawing this email correspondence to the attention of the High Court urgently. And we need to see the entirety of it but there is at the very least a suspicion that DHSC has sought to conjure up false evidence to put before the High Court.

Read 6 tweets

Jo Maugham QC

@JolyonMaugham

11 Nov

Nice to have the leader of the Labour Party behind us.

Revealing to hear Johnson go out of his way to praise the private sector (especially in the context of Ayanda doing taxpayers over). A wee bird in Treasury told us yesterday of their belief that this outsourcing is part of a systemic attempt to dismantle the civil service.

If you'd like to read the extraordinary story of Ayanda, as told by the Government's own lawyers, you can do so here. rebrand.ly/gld-ris-2907

Read 6 tweets

Jo Maugham QC

@JolyonMaugham

8 Nov

Just worth reminding ourselves, as we look at how the likes of Kate Bingham and Dido Harding are delivering for the nation, what's actually happening on the ground. /1

We've invested vast sums in (at least) two pieces of unproven testing technology. The first is a kind of LAMP test by a company called Optigene. We've spent £323m on Optigene technology - how is it performing? /2

Ummm. Not so good, to be honest.

As this Guardian report discloses it failed to pick up more than half of all people who actually had Coronavirus. I'd say that's pretty sub-optimal. /3 theguardian.com/world/2020/nov…

Read 9 tweets

Jo Maugham QC

@JolyonMaugham

8 Nov

So, we own something called the British Business Bank.

And through British Business Bank we own British Patient Capital.

And British Patient Capital invested $65m in the for-profit SV Health Investors' Impact Medicine Fund.

Read 7 tweets

Jo Maugham QC

@JolyonMaugham

7 Nov

"By 50% to 27% Britons believe that people should be allowed to self-identify as a gender different to the one they were assigned at birth... women and younger people, are likelier to hold more trans-friendly views": YouGov. yougov.co.uk/topics/politic…

Here's what Kantar found about differing attitudes to trans people between men and women: kantar.com/inspiration/so…

"A gender difference in attitudes also emerges, with women more
likely than men to say that prejudice towards transgender people is
'always wrong'": the British Social Attitudes Survey. bsa.natcen.ac.uk/media/39358/5_….

Read 4 tweets