A slightly silly headline. The legal action is continuing in respect of Dido Harding and Mike Coupe but not Kate Bingham... theguardian.com/politics/2021/…
The point of principle - about a "jobs for your friends" attitude that sacrifices the public to the private interest - is legally difficult but incredibly important. If you want to persuade a judge you have to pursue it in the right factual context.
Spending the money given to us responsibly involves us constantly assessing, as Government tells us more about the facts, whether to continue and in relation to what points. Our extraordinary success rate is not a coincidence.
For example, we fought and won - beating the Government, the EU Commission and the Council along the way - litigation to establish the UK could unilaterally revoke article 50 ft.com/content/3a0238…. But to get there we ditched a similar case we had brought in Dublin.
Why we are referring a series of transactions involving the Prime Minister's advisor Munira Mirza, Priti Patel and Matt Hancock to the Serious Fraud Office. THREAD.
Government's position has always been that the award of PPE contracts was a politically neutral process. Its usual formulation is that all PPE contracts were awarded pursuant to "the same eight-stage process to assess and process offers." See for example nao.org.uk/wp-content/upl…
However, @GoodLawProject has uncovered evidence that go-betweens who had little apparent to offer apart from their political connections were paid vast sums of money to deliver contracts.
Hypocritical. Grim. Probably unlawful. (We are advised) probably challengable. But I don't think Hancock can survive this. And there's more than enough important work for @GoodLawProject to do elsewhere.
"Why unlawful?" some are asking? THREAD
He appointed Ms Coladangelo as a non-executive director of DHSC in September 2020. The role entitles her to substantial payments from public funds.
Not sure how Boris Johnson, whose lover was paid with public money, sacks Matt Hancock for paying his lover with public money. But they are both all kinds of sleazy.
A Government of sex pests, liars, law breakers and adulterers, enriching their friends and their lovers with public money. Hard to believe it's ours.
Here's why the BBC should be reporting the story. It's not about who Hancock commits adultery with. It's about what and why he spends public money on.
Assume you are an ambitious civil servant. Someone who is a clearly a friend of Hancock's writes to him offering to sell PPE. He passes the email on to you. Do you (a) treat them like everyone else? Or (b) take your cue from their relationship and him passing you their offer?
This 👆🏼 is what Matt Hancock says he was doing. So it's not an academic question.
What is Matt Hancock's friend going to do if they feel they ought to have won a PPE contract and didn't? If they kick off will that be good for your career? If they threaten you will you take that seriously? Will you be damn sure to treat them with kid gloves?
What's the end point for a country ruled by a Government that has become indifferent to breaches of the rule of law?
We don't think the Government has consent from the people for its law-breaking. You and I comply with the law - or face the consequences - and so should the Government.
This is no trivial matter. This is not some technicality. This is the High Court agreeing that a Cabinet Minister looks to be channelling public money - your money - to his associates. Outrageous that the Government should pretend there is nothing to see here.
Curious interview with BBC World At One. A judge has just found Govt's conduct unlawful and characterised by the appearance of favouritism to friends: a striking thing. But the interviewer gave me little space to explain the implications and argued Govt's case against me.
It's progress of a sort, I suppose. They never even had me on when I was winning all the Brexit cases. But I continue to think the BBC reveals itself in these interviews: as a defender of power rather than as interested in the accountability of power.
We'll clip the interview and add it to this thread so you can listen for yourself. But the BBC's attack-minded positioning felt to me as though, by exposing the Government as a law breaker, it was me who had done something wrong.