Thread by @allthecitizens

🚨BREAKING:

Of the top 20 firms awarded Covid19 contracts, six have links to the Conservative Party. THREAD:

@allthecitizens and @BylineBITE have looked at more than 2,500 contracts awarded in response to the pandemic. docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d…

Eight of the top 50 companies, and twelve of the top 100 companies also have some level of connections to the Tories.

Uniserve, the 5th most awarded company, owned by Iain Liddell who authored a paper for a pro-Brexit lobby group aligned with Gove and Sunak. Uniserve said his involvement was just the paper and that gov had approached them to provide logistics support. bylinetimes.com/2021/03/31/map…

The 11th most awarded company - Randox Laboratories - employs Tory MP Owen Paterson as an advisor. A Randox spokesperson denied that Owen Paterson had been involved in securing their contracts, saying it was because Randox is a large diagnostics company. theguardian.com/world/2020/may…

Primer Design Ltd is the 18th most awarded company. Its parent company Novacyt has Tory donor shareholder Chris Hulatt via the Octopus group. Primer did not respond to our request for comment. bylinetimes.com/2020/05/22/ano…

The 20th most awarded company, Medacs Healthcare, is ultimately controlled by Tory donor and former party deputy chairman, Lord Ashcroft. Medacs also did not respond to our request for comment.
opendemocracy.net/en/dark-money-…

The 4th most awarded company is Global Access Diagnostics (GAD). One of the firm’s directors, Ali Siddiqui, donated £8,634 to the Prime Minister’s brother, Jo Johnson, in 2017.
theyworkforyou.com/peer/24895/lor…

GAD’s parent company Mologic said “Global Access Diagnostics and Mologic are social enterprises that are structured to invest all profits into products and life science innovations dedicated to escalating epidemics and the next pandemic.”

Consultancy Deloitte are the 10th biggest Covid contract winners, with £489,769,881 in individual contracts as various agencies outsourced their handling of the pandemic to consultancy firms. They've been heavily involved with the Test and Trace programme.
ft.com/content/a072d5…

Although Deloitte has not donated directly to the Conservative Party since 2010, former Tory advisors like James Caldecourt hold senior positions at the company and Tory Lord Hill is a registered advisor. members.parliament.uk/member/4144/re…

Deloitte told us that “No former special advisors now working as Deloitte employees were involved at any stage of our support for the testing programme.”

Other Tory-linked companies in the top 50 companies that won contracts in terms of value include P14 Medical, owned by Conservative councillor Steve Dechan and Ayanda Capital, advised by government advisor Andrew Mills… bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politi…

The leading contract winner, Innova, was recently criticised by the US FDA who expressed “significant concerns” about the accuracy of the company’s Covid tests, which the UK has bought more than a billion units of.
fiercebiotech.com/medtech/u-k-do…

To put Innova’s contract wins in perspective, £3.1bn is more than the budgets of the four smallest UK government ministries combined.

All the companies that responded to our requests for comment asserted that their connections played no role in them winning contracts. Yet it has been revealed that some of the biggest contract-winning companies have seen their offers fast-tracked via a VIP contracts lane.

Companies that have reportedly seen their offers fast-tracked include Uniserve, P14 Medical, and Clandeboye Agencies.

Even if these connections did not play a role, the fact that so many companies winning contracts have govt connections raises serious questions about conflicts of interest and transparency

There's no suggestion of wrongdoing on the part of the companies or individuals involved, but in the interest of transparency we continue to raise awareness of the ongoing apparent trend of companies in proximity to the Tory Party being awarded lucrative public sector contracts.

[amendment - as the totals are constantly in flux, Medacs would actually be the 19th most awarded company, not 20th]

Catch the full article from @jwsal at @BylineTimes below:
bylinetimes.com/2021/07/15/con…