Thread by @GoodLawProject

Day 4 of our legal challenge over PPE contracts and preferential treatment to 'VIPs' is now underway. Today, Government's lawyers will set out their defence.

Here's our recap on what's happened so far:

https://twitter.com/GoodLawProject/status/1395446995033206789

Michael Bowsher QC, barrister for the Government, tells the Court that Government has never said this was a perfect procurement. Acknowledge that "this was a procurement conducted in a particular context of stress".

Government claiming "all the High Priority Lane was was a different route into the decision-making process...It is not apparent that these contracts benefited..." 🧐

But emails from civil servants show otherwise - VIPs got quicker response times, 'handholding' and escalation:

MBQC for Government: "With a year’s hindsight it may be one could have come up with a better solution. But in last March these offers needed to be dealt with and thank goodness they were."

The Ayanda masks contract was awarded on 30th April 2020 bbc.co.uk/news/uk-536728….

The High Priority Lane was not intended to be a quality filter, "although that was one of the effects it had...many senior referrers in any event did form a view that the purpose of the HPL was also to take forward particularly high quality or high priority offers"

MBQC acting for the Government: as regards due diligence, "what is reasonable to expect in early April might be different from what you expect in late April"

MBQC: Re: due diligence process, "we acknowledge the process was imperfect and flawed, but what we are seeing in this evidence is a steady process of improvement."

If there were no benefits or disadvantages from going through the High Priority Lane for PPE contracts as Government claims, why is it blocking the release of the companies who were put in that lane? opendemocracy.net/en/dark-money-…

We've uncovered text messages between Andrew Mills (Ayanda, VIP lane firm) and an official in the PPE procurement team - which seem to show pressure being applied after Mills chases:

Why weren't health orgs told about the VIP lane?

National medical associations with expert knowledge including the British Medical Association + the Royal College of Nursing were not told about the VIP lane, and were therefore prevented from referring known PPE suppliers

While many experts were frozen out, companies with political connections and no experience of PPE were fast tracked through a 'VIP lane'.

The Government would rather you weren't paying attention. Sign up for updates, and help spread the word: glplive.org/ppe-subscribe

We'll be back in Court for the final day of our mammoth hearing tomorrow.

And thanks to the information uncovered through this litigation, we will be publishing details of a slew of further “VIPs” very shortly. Watch this space. 👀