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.
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 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. 👀
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🚨 The final day of our High Court hearing over huge PPE contracts to firms with no prior experience and the 'VIP lane' is underway. 🚨
It begins with Government trying to submit new evidence... at what some might say is a rather late stage in proceedings🧐
The Judge has refused the application on the basis that the evidence comes too late and effectively provides a "moving target" for us and @EveryDoctorUK. Which is simply not fair in a hearing of this kind.
Government lawyer tells the Court that the offers on the High Priority Lane tended on average to be better, bigger offers, so they had an advantage because of their nature.
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
🚨 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.”
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.
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."
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…