Damian Hastie Profile picture
Feb 28 13 tweets 2 min read Read on X
Exclusive Plymouth Brethren Covid Contracts🧵

When Covid contracts were being awarded, there was a common theme. The Govt used companies owned by members of the Exclusive Plymouth Brethren.

PPE, Tests, Ventilators, Visors, Beds, Packaging all supplied by Brethren companies.
Unispace (later to become Sante), the office design company, awarded £675 million in PPE to the DHSC. Recently shown to have been put through the VIP route by Michael Gove.
Medco Solutions, a new company only incorporated in late March 2020, awarded contracts worth £950 million for PPE & Tests.
Agile Medical, a healthcare furniture company, awarded contract for £18.5 million for Ventilators.
Kingsbury Press (since sold), a printing company, awarded a contract for Visors worth almost £13 million.
Oska Care, a healthcare bed company, awarded a contract for over £20 million to supply beds/mattresses for the Nightingales. Later, these beds were being sold for as little as £6 as two out of three bought couldn't be used in a clinical setting in the UK
Carlton Packaging, a packaging company, awarded £3 million of contracts for test packaging.
Interestingly, directors of these companies are all connected

Garth Woodcock, a founder of Unispace, is a director of Oska Care and is the brother in law of Chris Glass at Agile Medical

Chris Glass nephews include Anthony Hazell at Unispace & Robert Layton at Kingsbury Press
Sebastian Parsons of Unispace is related to the Magee family at Carlton Packaging.
The Magees are also cousins of Garth Woodcock .

There are other family relations between the Hazell, Glass, Woodcock, Parsons, Magee & Layton families.
Finally, Medco Solutions director Ross Robertson was an employee of Unispace up to the start of the pandemic.
He is also a director of another company alongside Unispace director Anthony Hazell's brother & Dean Hales, the brother of Unispace/Sante directors Gareth & Charles Hales
The above is just a small sample of the many family & business connections across all of the £2.6 billion contract winning Plymouth Brethren members.
The question still remains around how such a small sect (16,000 in the UK) was so heavily involved in the covid contracts.
Often, in sectors that bore no resemblance to their expertise.
It is interesting to note that the brethren are prolific deliverers of leaflets/election material for the Tories at Elections and are very active in lobbying their Tory MPs

It helps to have friends in a time of need

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More from @DamianHastie

Dec 18, 2023
Covid Contract Profits 🧵No 1

There are 6 companies that DHSC/UKHSA/SCCL spent more than £1 billion with during the Covid pandemic

This thread looks at the profit of 5 of the 6. I am missing information around Full Support Healthcare
These five companies are:

Innova spend over £5.2 billion for testing
Uniserve spend £1.3 billion for PPE & logistics
Life Technologies spend £1.2 billion for testing
Serco spend £1.1 billion for various Covid services
Tanner Pharma spend £1 billion for testing
Innova Medical Group (IMG) supplied Lateral flow tests & in total DHSC & UKHSA spent over £5.2 billion on these tests!
I do not have the breakdown of the company accounts as they are a US based business. What I can show though is how some of the profits have been spent
Read 11 tweets
Nov 20, 2023
Covid Contract 🧵No 13

Visage Ltd, £6.3 million in PPE contracts via the VIP channel

Referrer details lost, the PPE unfit for purpose & the connections to Rishi Sunak's father in law. One of over dozen connections to various Lords & Tories
Visage are a Salford based clothes supplier, a fully owned subsidiary of a Hong Kong family business Li & Fung

Which in turn is part of the larger family business the Fung Group. Owned by brothers William & Victor plus Spencer Fung (son of Victor)

A wealthy & connected company
They were awarded 2 contracts, one in early April 2020 & the other 10 days later. The first for face shields, masks & goggles. The 2nd for gowns

On both occasions they were paid nearly the full amount within 2 days of the award

DHSC shows spend with Visage totals £7.3 million
Read 20 tweets
Nov 4, 2023
Covid Contracts 🧵No 11 Part 2

Unispace/Sante won £950 million of contracts

In part 2 I look at the incredible story of a company that had no background in PPE or Testing but became one of the DHSC biggest suppliers in the pandemic

Remember Unispace & their lost VIP referrer
It is important to clarify the Unispace was sold in Feb 2021 after the PPE contracts

This thread looks at Unispace prior to being sold & the new business (Sante) formed by the previous directors

The current owners of Unispace have no connection to the business prior to sale
Unispace Global PTY Ltd was owned by brothers Gareth & Charles Hales. They are two of the sons of Bruce Hales, who is the leader of the Plymouth Brethren

It was a global business based predominantly in countries where the brethren are located. In the UK Unispace Global Ltd
Read 30 tweets
Oct 24, 2023
Covid Contracts 🧵No 10

Meller Designs PPE contracts have been reported on originally by Byline Times, Good Law Project, Open Democracy, The Mirror, The Time & others

I am going to throw light on something highly unusual that I believe has been missed up to now
Meller Designs owner was David Meller

Meller is a Tory party donor & friend of Michael Gove. They were referred via the VIP channel by Gove

It is also reported that Meller contacted Lord Bethell to lobby and speed up the process of contracts award on the 6th April 2020
Meller Designs were awarded 6 contracts for masks, gloves & sanitiser. The first awarded on the 26th April 2020, then the 5th May, a further one on the 7th May. They then also received a further 3 contracts in early June.

However there is a bit of a kicker to this story!!
Read 7 tweets
Oct 23, 2023
Covid Contract 🧵No 9

Ciga Healthcare based in Ballymena NI. Pre pandemic they specialised in diagnostic tests with Suresign pregnancy kits as one of their main products

This has always been one of made favourite Tory Covid contract stories, belt in for this one!
Ciga were awarded 2 contracts for Rapid Antibody Tests on 20th March 2020, without competition

The awards were not published until Jan 2021. The actual contracts are missing from Contracts Finder

The value was £5.3 million & they ran from 20th March to 15th July 2020
On the 30th Mar 2020, DHSC spend shows a payment of £6.62 million to Ciga. I assume this is the contract award plus VAT.

It was one of the first Covid contracts awarded & a diagnostics supplier, would seem to make sense.

The connections to the Tories though are mindblowing!
Read 9 tweets

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