Because Government Press Officers are claiming Ministers were exonerated by the National Audit Office report, let's take a look at what it actually says.
(1) we cannot give assurance that government applied appropriate commercial practices
(2) departments failed to document why particular suppliers were chosen or how conflicts of interest were managed
(3) no source was recorded for about half the VIP cases. So how could you manage conflicts of interest?
Where sources were recorded they were likely to be the private offices of Ministers.
Was Hancock's publican VIP laned?
(4) an advisor to Liz Truss, who also had a financial stake in the Ayanda deal, lobbied civil servants to override financial concerns about the deal. The NAO seems to think his lobbying had an effect.
Remember Government had the NAO report for what it calls "fact-checking". Nevertheless it contains basic factual errors favourable to the Government. The Regs don't "recommend" details be published "within 90 days". They *mandate* publication within *30 days*.
And once you understand what Government did and didn't "fact check" you begin to read the NAO report with a far more cynical eye.
Thread inspired by this quote.
The truth is that, even in a tiny sample, Ministers did put people into the VIP lane, Ministerial advisers did lobby for their own commercial interests, and much that should have happened to identify Ministerial conflicts of interest did not.
And if you believe that Matt Hancock had nothing to do with his ex-publican winning a lucrative contract to supply Matt Hancock's department, well, I have several 747s worth of dodgy, overpriced PPE to sell you.
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So, so grim. Amazing work from the Guardian. But there will be dozens, if not hundreds, of contracts like this that we will never know about. theguardian.com/world/2020/nov…
Huge credit to @lawrencefelic. So difficult landing stories like this - amazing work.
You just know what the Guardian has been able to report is the tip of the iceberg. We will ask our lawyers to take a look and see if we can show you more. But much more difficult when it is a sub-contract.
In which @guyadams takes a long hard look at the men made incredibly wealthy by what look like sweetheart PPE deals granted by this Government. dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8…
Three days after @GoodLawProject broke the story of the $50m payable by a jeweller based in Florida to a Spanish businessman for poorly defined services in connection with a "lucrative" PPE deal granted by the Govt at your expense, the court proceedings in Miami were halted.
"How I was cancelled": read all about it in the Mail, the Telegraph, UnHerd, the Times, the Spectator...
What is indisputable fact is that the Guardian - which repeatedly covered the case brought by the anti-abortionist's and homophobe's lawyer of choice, Paul Conrathe - has not given one inch to @GoodLawProject's attempt to secure trans kids can secure a therapeutic assessment.
Moreover, it appears as though Comment is Free was blocked from carrying a piece in support of the Good Law Project litigation. This is not a comment on its younger staff, but I would say the editorial line of the Guardian is more transphobic than that of the Mail.
When the future history of the rise in England of hatecrime, antiscience and lietelling comes to be written the finger will be pointed squarely at the BBC for its failure to engage in a thoughtful way with what "impartiality" requires.
The BBC's intellectually flabby conflation of that which is properly contestable with that which is contested by marginal interests both confers legitimacy on the illegitimate and is antithetical to its charter obligation to "act in the public interest."
It shouldn't matter, right? We should be tackling the illegitimate ideas rather than the media that promotes them. However, the BBC's monopolistic voice makes it the only arbiter that matters of legitimacy. And it consistently arbitrates wrongly.