The Good Law Project reveal that the government misled the National Audit Office about how many companies were given “VIP” treatment for Covid contracts.
As reported in The Times, leaked internal documents have revealed a list of 68 companies referred to as VIPs. This despite the fact that in November the government made public a so-called exhaustive list of 50 companies given preferential treatment for contracts to supply personal protective equipment through a “high-priority lane” or so-called VIP lane. The extra 18 companies received almost £1 billion in PPE contracts between them:
Jolyon Maugham, director of the Good Law Project, said: “Sleazy, wasteful, unfair, illegal — and a billion quid more of them than we were told. We are grateful to the insider who cried ‘enough’ so that the truth at last could be told.”
The VIP lane was set up at the start of the pandemic and allowed MPs, ministers and senior government officials to pass on offers of help to a special email inbox.
Government auditors found that suppliers with links to politicians were ten times more likely to be awarded contracts than those who applied to the Department of Health. In some cases due diligence checks were not carried out until weeks after contracts had been awarded.
Last month, after a challenge by the Good Law Project, a High Court judge found that the use of a VIP lane to award contracts was illegal.
Maugham said it was “abundantly clear” from a health department document and internal emails that these companies were treated as VIPs when handing out contracts. “None of the contracts were subject to competition,” Maugham said, arguing that the government “misled” the National Audit Office about the size of the VIP lane.
The Good Law Project said that the companies may not have been aware they were referred to as VIPs. There is no suggestion the companies were involved in wrongdoing.
This scandal could well run and run.
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