Thread by @allthecitizens

We’ve found 8 Tory donors that, collectively, have won £881m in 35 Covid19 UK gov contracts

Combined they've donated £8.2m to the Tories

So, for every £1 donated, they've averaged a return of £110 from contracts won

The golden line of cronyism

Exclusive with @BylineTimes

Wol Kolade’s donated £678,000 since '02. Procurement consultancy Efficio received £5.9m in 8 contracts for work ranging from advising on PPE procurement to vaccine distribution. Efficio were part-owned by Livingbridge, private Equity firm headed by Kolade.

https://twitter.com/allthecitizens/status/1355124277746552833?s=20

Scott Fletcher’s donated £240,000 since 2014. Fletcher founded ‘digital & cloud experts’ ANS Group in 1996. They received £2.5m over 4 contracts. Though he resigned control of ANS in 2016, he retains significant control of parent co, Project Daytona.

https://twitter.com/allthecitizens/status/1354837591825244162?s=20

David Meller’s donated £60,000 since 2009 (inc £3,250 to Michael Gove’s failed leadership bid). Meller Designs were handed 6 contracts worth £163.5m to supply facemasks / hand sanitiser. Normally they provide home & beauty products to high-street retailers
bylinetimes.com/2020/09/18/fir…

Michael Ashcroft’s donated £5.9m since '01. Ashcroft, former party deputy chairman, sat as a Tory peer until 2015. He’s also the main shareholder of the Impellam Group, parent company of Medacs Healthcare, who received £350m to supply temp staff to the NHS

https://twitter.com/allthecitizens/status/1351943500523311105?s=20

Steven Parkin’s donated £725,000 since 2016, including in the 2019 election. Parkins’ company, Clipper Logistics, were awarded a £1.3m contract to take charge of the supply channel for PPE at the start of the pandemic
bylinetimes.com/2020/04/02/dis…

Haraldur Agustsson’s donated £375,000 since 2016. Agustsson owns 2 companies that secured deals during the pandemic: Alpha Solway and Globus Shetland. Total value of the 8 contracts? £157.8m. Agustsson donated to the Tories via Globus.
bylinetimes.com/2020/09/16/com…

Philip Hulme’s donated £110,000 since 2013. Co-founded by Hulme in 1981, Computacenter received £198m in contracts to supply laptops for remote learning for children. It later transpired some of the machines had been supplied at almost double market value.
goodlawproject.org/update/computa…

Lord Rigby has donated £105,000 since 2017. His Specialist Computer Centres were another company awarded contracts to supply laptops during the pandemic, having scored a £2.1m contract. SCC is owned by the Rigby Group PLC, where Rigby sits as a director. bylinetimes.com/2021/01/14/new…

Across the £17.3bn of Covid19 contracts, almost 5% was won by companies linked to Tory donors. And this doesn’t include contracts won by advisors, ex-ministers, and other Tories, who have connections to £2.1bn (12%) of all Covid-19 awards.

https://twitter.com/allthecitizens/status/1354141400674267141?s=20

Of the 8 Tory backers above, 4 are members of the ‘Leaders Group’ dining society, where members can gain one-on-one meetings with high-level Conservatives for a £50,000 annual fee. That group’s donated more than £130m to the Tories since 2010 opendemocracy.net/en/dark-money-…

Increasingly, Tory party donations have come from a small, hyper-wealthy section of society that wields considerable influence over policy, public-private contracts and government procurement. Leaders Group members alone are worth an estimated £45.7bn theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

In the run-up to the 2019 general election, Tory donations accounted for £19.4m; 63.1% of all donations given to political parties and representing the highest value per individual donation in politics.

Post-Brexit referendum saw a drop-off in smaller businesses donating to the Tories, leaving them more reliant on big individuals. Economist Francis Coppola described the party as being “wholly unrepresentative in any way of the UK population”

So: a £110 return from contracts - given without proper tendering - won per £1 donated. It’s easy to see why a third of Britain’s richest individuals (48 of 151) gave money to Johnson in the last election. It was a solid investment.
independent.co.uk/news/uk/politi…

Government has already faced criticism regarding its issuing of contracts from the National Audit Office, who in Nov published a report highlighting a lack of adequate documentation around awards, specifically regarding potential conflicts of interest:
nao.org.uk/press-release/…

The report highlighted the existence of a high-priority lane set up within the Cabinet Office, where referrals frequently came from offices of ministers, awarding 1 in 10 suppliers contracts processed through it, compared with 1 in 100 via usual channels.

https://twitter.com/allthecitizens/status/1332038567523135490?s=20

In the wake of ongoing scandals surrounding procurement, SNP MP @OwenThompson introduced a “Crony Bill” to the House last week, as reported by @BylineTimes. The bill aims to ensure MPs can properly scrutinise the interests of ministers awarding contracts.
bylinetimes.com/2021/01/27/cro…

In response to this thread, Labour MP & Shadow Cabinet Office Minister @RachelReevesMP gave the following statement:

We offered a right to reply to all of the donors listed above, but at time of publication none had responded.

Any future response given will be listed in this thread below.

As all these award wins were legal, and the donations above board, the fault does not lie with the companies. They did nothing legally wrong.

Though a donor profiting from govt contracts in a pandemic that killed 100,000 is an ethical debate in itself…

To catch the full article of this story, please see the link below, and follow @allthecitizens and @BylineTimes to keep updated on our efforts to hold the government to account:

https://twitter.com/BylineTimes/status/1357675668591566852?s=20