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2 Mar, 22 tweets, 9 min read
BREAKING: At least 1,250 UK gov contracts issued under Covid19 were not published on time, @allthecitizens have found - meaning 75% of the 1,670 now-public pandemic-response contracts were published unlawfully late. THREAD:
The finding comes after the High Court ruling that Matt Hancock broke the law when failing to publish details of contracts on time. He and other ministers played down the problem, saying they were only published ‘a fortnight late’. This is largely untrue.
theguardian.com/society/2021/f…
After a judge ruled the Health Secretary had breached transparency legislation in how “vast quantities” of public money was spent, @allthecitizens examined almost 1700 contracts, finding an average delay between starting and publication of 93 days.
docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d…
In judgement to the case brought by @GoodLawProject, Justice Chamberlain said: "In a substantial number of cases, the secretary of state breached his legal obligation to publish contract award notices within 30 days of award” Our data shows publication was late in 75.22% of cases
Hancock was unrepentant, saying he wouldn't apologise "because to apologise would imply I'd do something differently”.

Below are just some of the contracts whose publication delay were over 9 months late:
theguardian.com/politics/2021/…
Company - Hays Specialist Recruitment Ltd.
Contract Start - 28 Jan 2020 / Published - 22 Feb 2021
Delay - 391 days
Value - £785,000

Description - ‘for the provision of temporary staff to assist in the Government's response to the Covid pandemic’
find-tender.service.gov.uk/Notice/003510-…
Company - TIB Molbiol Syntheselabor GmbH
Contract Start - 31 Jan 2020 / Published - 22 Feb 2021
Delay - 388 days
Value - £136,713

Description - ‘primers and probes for diagnostic detection of the SARS-CoV-2 virus by real-time RT-PCR instruments’
find-tender.service.gov.uk/Notice/003509-…
Company - Shiva Hotels Limited
Contract Start - 24 Feb 2020 / Published - 22 Feb 2021
Delay - 364 days
Value - £ 400,000

Description - ‘emergency accommodation for staff working in the provision of services related to the Government's response’
find-tender.service.gov.uk/Notice/003513-…
Company - DLA Piper UK LLP
Contract Start - 16 March 2020 / Published - 23 Feb 2021
Delay - 344 days
Value - £39,781

Description - Legal advice on key issues arising from COVID-19, centred around data, functionality and contact tracing app
contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/notice/3406118…
Company - Eden Caterers Limited
Contract Start - 18 March 2020 / Published - 22 Feb 2021
Delay - 341 days
Value - £ 165,000

Description - 'short term emergency catering for staff working in the provision of services related to the Government's response'
find-tender.service.gov.uk/Notice/003514-…
Company - TXM Healthcare Limited
Contract Start - 19 March 2020 / Published - 22 Feb 2021
Delay - 340 days

Value - £510,000

Description - 'temporary biomedical scientists and other medical staff to meet the Government's response to the Covid pandemic'.
find-tender.service.gov.uk/Notice/003526-…
Company - Life Technologies (Applied Biosystems) Ltd
Contract Start - 26 March 2020 / Published - 22 Feb 2021
Delay - 333 days

Value - £775,000

Description - 'provision of mastermixes for use as part of the Government's response to the Covid pandemic'
find-tender.service.gov.uk/Notice/003512-…
Company - China National Pharmaceutical Foreign Trade Corporation
Contract Start - 22 March 2020 / Published - 10 Feb 2021
Delay - 325 days

Value - £ 115,926

Description - 'supply of Personal Protective Equipment to protect Health and Care Workers'.
contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/notice/8044eaa…
Company - KPMG LLP
Contract Start - 23 March 2020 / Published - 10 Feb 2021
Delay - 324 days

Value - £ 11,000,000

Description - ‘Accounting, audit resources to support Covid 19 response’
contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/notice/5856360…
Company - Shanghai Sunwin Industry Group Co., Ltd
Contract Start - 23 March 2020 / Published - 9 Feb 2021
Delay - 323 days

Value - £ 85,624

Description - ‘Personal Protective Equipment to protect Health and Care Workers from contracting Covid 19’
contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/notice/09a6df0…
Company - China Meheco Co., Ltd
Contract Start - 23 March 2020 / Published - 8 Feb 2021
Delay - 322 days

Value - £ 12,922,363

Description - 'supply of Personal Protective Equipment to protect Health and Care Workers for contracting the Covid 19 disease'
find-tender.service.gov.uk/Notice/002508-…
Company - Primerdesign Ltd
Contract Start - 13 March 2020 / Published - 28 Jan 2021
Delay - 321 Days

Value - £ 983,456

Description - 'Provision of Genesig Real-Time PCR Coronavirus CE IVD Kit and other reagents for use in the Government's response'.
contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/notice/1fe36c9…
Company - Shenzhen DJ Medical Equipment Co., Ltd
Contract Start - 27 March 2020 / Published - 9 Feb 2021
Delay - 319 days

Value - £ 5,397,520

Description - 'supply Personal Protective Equipment to protect Health and Care Workers from contracting Covid19'
contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/notice/06c8d4e…
Company - Medicines Discovery Catapult Limited
Contract Start - 20 April 2020 / Published - 25 Feb 2021
Delay - 311 days

Value - £54,000,000

Description - Provision of goods and services to support the UK COVID-19 Testing Strategy
contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/notice/8c4bf32…
Company - LIFE TECHNOLOGIES LIMITED
Contract Start - 1 Jan 2020 / Published - 3 Nov 2020
Delay - 307 days

Value - £ 226,000

Description - 'for the provision of Consumables for all variations of KingFisher instruments'
contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/Notice/810d241…
These delays pose a serious threat to accountability and transparency: we still don't know how many contracts are waiting to be published, how much has been spent, how many have been awarded to people linked to the Tory party or why it is taking the government so long to do so.
@allthecitizens will continue to collate data on the government’s response to the pandemic and publish it so that everyone can see whether their taxes are being spent appropriately.

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More from @allthecitizens

The Citizens Profile picture
3 Mar
BREAKING: Over half a billion pounds (£510m) in Covid19 contracts were awarded to 35 management consultancy companies, @allthecitizens has found. £490m was won by just 10 firms. Thread: ImageImage
Only 21% (29) of these contracts were published within the 30 day legal time limit, and just 5% (8/148) were awarded through competitive tender - the rest were either fast tracked or awarded through previous framework agreements.
The Ministry of Housing Community and Local Government, the Ministry of Defence, and the Department of Health and Social Care were the three biggest ministries that farmed out consultancy services.
Read 16 tweets
The Citizens Profile picture
26 Feb
As @allthecitizens explore the scope of US analytics company Palantir in UK institutions, we’ve found £91m+ awarded to the controversial Silicon Valley surveillance outfit across government. Let’s unpack the work they’re doing with the MoD...
Palantir’s biggest UK client, the MOD, has awarded them £43m (4m more found since first reporting) contracts since 2015, including building a “search visualisation and analysis system”, a £28m contract relating to AI systems in combat aircraft. wccftech.com/palantir-secur…
In the US, Palantir recently took over a similar initiative. Project Maven was a Pentagon bid to build an AI surveillance platform for drone warfare. Google stepped away from the project citing ethical concerns. thenextweb.com/artificial-int…
Read 10 tweets
The Citizens Profile picture
25 Feb
As @allthecitizens map the expanding reach of controversial company Palantir into UK institutions, we’ve found £91m+ contracts awarded to the US surveillance outfit across British government. Let’s look at their work with local authorities...THREAD
In 2014 Sunderland City Council began operating an “intelligence hub” using Palantir software to “gather, process, and share data and information to help us better understand our customers and communities (and their) patterns of behaviour”.
The 5 yr project, developed under the council’s Community Leadership Programme to achieve “£100m of budget reductions”, ran with Palantir until July 2019, and cost £4.5m - once the contract ended it was hoped Sunderland Council would run it autonomously.
publictechnology.net/articles/news/…
Read 11 tweets
The Citizens Profile picture
22 Feb
THE ONE PERCENT - BREAKING

Since March 2020, @allthecitizens has found at least £21bn has been spent by the UK government in their pandemic response.

£5.3bn of this (25%) went to just 1% (10) of the 990 companies that won contracts.

THREAD.
The highest value of contracts, over £777bn, went to the logistics and trade management provider Uniserve. It’s founder, Iain Liddell (below centre) advised a pro-Brexit thinktank chaired by 2 Tory ministers. It’s largest contract win was for almost half a billion pounds.
The next was Unispace Global Ltd, an interior design company, which won almost £680m. Unispace is linked to the Plymouth Brethren, a religious group also tied to major contract awards. One of Unispace’s directors is the son of the Church’s leader.
Read 17 tweets
The Citizens Profile picture
9 Feb
BREAKING: new Covid19 contract lands today - £14.4m for PPE back with company CH & L. The director is Hon Frances Stanley, friend of Matt Hancock, whose husband donated £5,000 directly to the Health Secretary.
find-tender.service.gov.uk/Notice/002630-…
The Contract, for supply of PPE for Healthcare Workers was issued on the 30 April 2020, so has taken 285 days to be published. Stanley was reported in 2016 as a Newmarket Racecourses committee and at a race with the MP for West Suffolk.
skysports.com/racing/news/12…
Frances’ husband Peter gave £5,000 in 2019 directly to the Health Secretary as a donation.
Read 4 tweets
The Citizens Profile picture
5 Feb
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.
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.
Read 22 tweets

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