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19 May, 5 tweets, 1 min read
Government has consistently said that although ministers could refer offers from people to supply PPE, they were not involved in the award of contracts.

We've uncovered Whatsapps showing Ministers “lobbied” officials to chase the progress of VIP contracts
theguardian.com/politics/2021/…
One WhatsApp shows an official saying that if they had a tracking system for PPE offers from companies referred by ministers, MPs or civil servants, it would save the procurement team from “being lobbied further by ministers/VIPs etc and the like”.
Internal documents released as part of our legal action reveal that Ayanda, a “family office” finance house, was awarded two PPE contracts for a total £252m having been referred to the VIP lane. Its representative, Andrew Mills, was an adviser to Liz Truss, the trade secretary.
Officials pushed for the contracts to be processed as quickly as possible, with one marking emails “URGENT VIP CASE” and “VERY URGENT VIP ESCALATION”, saying that if the deal did not happen: “Andrew will escalate as high as he can possibly go!”
Our High Court hearing over hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers money wasted on PPE not fit for purpose and the VIP Lane continues at 10.30am this morning - watch this space.

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More from @GoodLawProject

Good Law Project Profile picture
20 May
💥 UK government told PPE deals were lined up with ‘bribes’ in China | Evening Standard

Follow the updates from day 3 of 5 in the High Court - from 10.30am. standard.co.uk/news/uk/ppe-br…
🚀WE'RE OFF.

First update - the Press Association have submitted an application in support of our request for the total amount of public money Government wasted on PPE not fit for purpose to be unredacted and released from the confidentiality ring.
JCQC: Perfectly understandable to prioritise large companies offering large volumes of certain material, or any volume of urgently needed material, but it's not justifiable to select for negotiation somebody who’s a contact of a minister. That shouldn’t be a ground for selection
Read 11 tweets
Good Law Project Profile picture
19 May
🚨 Day 2 of our High Court hearing over the PPE procurement scandal has begun 🚨

Starting with Ayanda - the hedge fund with political connections awarded £252 million worth of contracts and put through the 'VIP Lane'. THREAD ⬇️standard.co.uk/news/uk/ayanda…
The contract with Ayanda resulted from communications from Mr Mills, a former advisor to the Department for International Trade. Their allocation to the VIP lane worked as follows:
As soon as Ayanda was allocated to the VIP lane, an individual pseudonymised as “1U” put pressure on an official to deal with it as quickly as possible: “This is likely to get escalated to Ministerial level in next 20 mins or so.”
Read 28 tweets
Good Law Project Profile picture
18 May
TODAY: we’re in Court battling Government over millions of pounds of unusable PPE and the fast track ‘VIP lane’ for political connections.

They’d rather we weren’t paying attention. Help spread the word. actions.goodlawproject.org/subscribe
And we're off! Our 5 day High Court hearing starts here.

Read our skeleton argument and follow our live updates from day 1 in court here ⬇️ glplive.org/1805-c-skele
Our barrister Jason Coppel QC tells the Court: "In a transparency case the parties should not be prohibited from mentioning the amount of public money wasted on a contract for no good reason of sensitivity."
Read 19 tweets
Good Law Project Profile picture
29 Apr
EXCLUSIVE: we can now reveal four more companies awarded contracts through the VIP Lane.

Clandeboye Agencies, P14 Medical, Luxe Lifestyle and Meller Designs. glplive.org/ppe-hearing
P14 Medical, run by a Tory councillor and donor, was awarded £276m in PPE contracts. bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politi…
Meller Designs, run by David Meller a large Tory donor and trustee of the rightwing lobby group Policy Exchange, was given more than £160m in PPE contracts. theguardian.com/world/2021/apr…
Read 7 tweets
Good Law Project Profile picture
29 Apr
📢And we're off! Our hearing over Matt Hancock's refusal to provide what we believe is critical evidence on our PPE challenges has begun.

Follow this thread for live updates from Court 👇 @EveryDoctorUK goodlawproject.org/news/ppe-urgen…
First up - our barrister Jason Coppel QC will be taking the Court through our arguments:

"The Defendant has made late and only partial disclosure and has refused to provide critical information on important parts of the case against him." glplive.org/2904-c-skele
Good Law Project and @EveryDoctorUK "are left in a position of being unable fairly to interrogate and challenge the account given by the Defendant in its evidence."
Read 26 tweets
Good Law Project Profile picture
27 Apr
NEW: The British public should not be paying to further the electoral ambitions of the Conservative Party.

We have now issued the first step in legal proceedings. huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/politcal…
Over the last few weeks we’ve seen a worrying trend of Government videos and social media content being misappropriated to advance Conservative Party political messaging. We believe the costs are coming out of the public purse, not the party coffers. glplive.org/cj-pa-2704
Government is legally required to publish - and follow - a policy to ensure a clear dividing line between informative communications, which can be funded by taxpayers, and electoral communications, governed by strict campaign finance rules.
Read 5 tweets

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