Wednesday, August 26, 2020
More government contract questions
The Mirror reveals that a firm run by a close ally of Dominic Cummings was awarded a £49,300 contract to advise Ofqual ahead of the A-level results fiasco.
Public First were hired to help the exam regulator with "insight on public opinion for this year's exam arrangements." However, the deal was put in place without other firms being allowed to bid for the work. This takes the total value of contracts handed to Public First this year over £1 million.
The paper says that Public First is a small lobbying and research firm run by James Frayne, a Brexit ally of Mr Cummings, and Rachel Wolf, who co-wrote the 2019 Tory manifesto:
The publication of the new contract was revealed by Tussell, a database of public contracts and spend.
It had already been reported the firm had been awarded an £840,000, no-competition contract to research public opinion on government policies - including Brexit and the coronavirus pandemic.
The Mirror revealed last week that the firm were given another £116,000 by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) to identify ways to "lock in the lessons learned" by the Government during the Covid-19 crisis.
When the existence of the Ofqual contract was first revealed in the Guardian last week, the regulator said the usual tendering rules had been bypassed because of “exceptional circumstances”.
Government contracts are usually awarded after a tender process which allows multiple providers to compete to provide the best value.
But after the Covid-19 pandemic struck, new rules allowed contracts worth hundreds of thousands of pounds to be handed to firms directly if they were deemed “urgent”.
A spokesperson said: “Due to the exceptional circumstances presented by the cancellation of exams, the single tender justification process was used for this contract, due to the need to urgently procure the work, in line with our procurement policy.”
The Mirror adds that Public First founder James Frayne and Boris Johnson ’s top aide Dominic Cummings worked together at the Department for Education while Michael Gove was Education Secretary. Years earlier in 2003, Mr Frayne and Mr Cummings founded an anti-EU think tank together, called the New Frontiers Foundation. The body closed in 2005.
Public First were hired to help the exam regulator with "insight on public opinion for this year's exam arrangements." However, the deal was put in place without other firms being allowed to bid for the work. This takes the total value of contracts handed to Public First this year over £1 million.
The paper says that Public First is a small lobbying and research firm run by James Frayne, a Brexit ally of Mr Cummings, and Rachel Wolf, who co-wrote the 2019 Tory manifesto:
The publication of the new contract was revealed by Tussell, a database of public contracts and spend.
It had already been reported the firm had been awarded an £840,000, no-competition contract to research public opinion on government policies - including Brexit and the coronavirus pandemic.
The Mirror revealed last week that the firm were given another £116,000 by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) to identify ways to "lock in the lessons learned" by the Government during the Covid-19 crisis.
When the existence of the Ofqual contract was first revealed in the Guardian last week, the regulator said the usual tendering rules had been bypassed because of “exceptional circumstances”.
Government contracts are usually awarded after a tender process which allows multiple providers to compete to provide the best value.
But after the Covid-19 pandemic struck, new rules allowed contracts worth hundreds of thousands of pounds to be handed to firms directly if they were deemed “urgent”.
A spokesperson said: “Due to the exceptional circumstances presented by the cancellation of exams, the single tender justification process was used for this contract, due to the need to urgently procure the work, in line with our procurement policy.”
The Mirror adds that Public First founder James Frayne and Boris Johnson ’s top aide Dominic Cummings worked together at the Department for Education while Michael Gove was Education Secretary. Years earlier in 2003, Mr Frayne and Mr Cummings founded an anti-EU think tank together, called the New Frontiers Foundation. The body closed in 2005.
