Today is the hearing of @GoodLawProject's judicial review of Dominic Cummings' decision to award a lucrative consultancy contract to his friends at Public First.
We are awed by the astonishing 10,709 donations to our crowdfunder.
However, Government has run up a jaw-dropping bill of an estimated £500-600k defending this one day judicial review of a contract worth £564,000. So we have left the crowdfunder open. crowdjustice.com/case/a-river-t…
The Government was unable to obtain a signature for the witness statement of the PM's former Director of Communications, Lee Cain, and so it has withdrawn his witness statement.
We are also posting key extracts from the documentary evidence to the page at the top of this thread.
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When we are told we are more impactful than the Opposition we are not cheered by the compliment, or critical of the Opposition, we are alarmed by the Government's success in reducing Parliament to an irrelevance.
Politically appointed regulators, a dominant and tame state news agency, the use of public money for Party purposes, a civil service neutral only in name, and an irrelevant Parliament is pretty close to a prescription for the end of democracy.
The Law Lord, Devlin, captured the innate conservatism of the judiciary in his description of them as a "body of elderly man who have lived on the whole unadventurous lives… old-fashioned in their ideas." But even they are likely to be further reigned in by this Government.
You can read the Government's Statement of Costs - totally over £508,000 - here. rebrand.ly/d-costs-1502
Government used an incredible 11 solicitors (4 senior solicitors, i.e. over 8 years PQE), 6 junior counsel and 2 QCs.
As a result, Government has incurred £70k communicating with themselves internally. Note – this is not communicating with counsel, which they include separately. This is just their lawyers, speaking to themselves.
We don’t know how many contracts Government gave to Saiger because it has been publishing them in lots of different places. Here are the five Government has published on “Contract Finder” which amount to £235m. /1
However, Government has also published five contracts with Saiger on Tenders Electronic Daily (and they are not exactly the same contracts). And they have withdrawn some contracts previously published on Contract Finder. /2
We at @GoodLawProject have a paralegal attending the case management hearing in the Tavistock's appeal in the Bell case on behalf of our trans defence fund. Occasional updates from them as the hearing progresses...
The 'stay' - effectively a suspension of the legal effect of the first instance decision - will continue. That has been agreed between the parties.
Judge doesn't want oral submissions from any of the would-be intervenors at the case management hearing. (I wouldn't read anything in to that.)
Another extraordinary development in our judicial review of Government's decision to award lucrative antibody test contracts to Abingdon Health. ft.com/content/272a49…
We have previously written about how Government has - there is no polite way to put this - lied about what it bought from Abingdon Health. goodlawproject.org/update/trying-…
We expect to make further, shocking, disclosures about Government and Abingdon's conduct in this case in the coming days and weeks.
Abingdon is one of the worst cases of Government misconduct I have seen (we could do with some help in pursuing it). crowdjustice.com/case/abingdon-…