As the BBC has reportedBBC has reported:
Boris Johnson told Sir James Dyson by text he would 'fix' tax issue
The substance does not matter greatly, although it related to staff sent by Dyson to the UK to work on Covid related projects who Dyson did not want subject to UK tax as a result.
What matters is that Johnson thought tax a matter capable of being changed in pursuit of the personal self interest of a person who had already moved his businesses from this country.
He gut what he wanted.
This is corruption. Tax codes are not created for the personal benefit of billionaires. They are created fur the benefit of society.
We appear to have a prime minister who does not know that.
As definitions of corruption go it's quite a good one.
And it's another nail in the coffin of our supposed democracy that someone in government can offer such assurances.
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It’s a disgrace but it’s not the first time it’s happened and it won’t be the last. And yet, I would be very surprised if it made a difference to the opinion polls. And, as disgraceful as Bore-ar$e’s actions are, that is worse IMVHO.
Craig
From the BBC report this was so that “employees would not have to pay extra tax if they came to the UK to make ventilators during the pandemic.”
So you would want extra tax levied on people coming to help the UK in an emergency? Seems very mean-spirited and spiteful. There might have been many more nails in real coffins without that help.
“The substance does not matter greatly” I think many whose lives were saved by that help would disagree.
Dyson could not deliver ventilators as it turned out
The government was to blame for the lack of ICU before this crisis broke out
And if Dyson was being charitable he could have covered the tax cost without demanding subsidy
The poverty of logic is all yours
How quickly the context is forgotten (after all, it spoils the ‘spin’).
At the time Dyson was approached I have a clear recollection that quite noticeably; specialist industry producers in ventilators in the UK were being ignored wholesale by government, and received neither access to ministers, help from government, still less supply contracts (I think this failure was even covered at the time, perhaps on C4 news from memory); in order for ministers to go direct in a highly publicised media operation to Dyson: a vacuum cleaner manufacturer (!), who had departed Britain (NB: Dyson’s established, specialist knowledge of medical ventilation eludes me; perhaps the PM’s unique talents led him to believe it was all a matter of switching from ‘suck’ to ‘blow’), but of course it ticked all the really important political boxes; it perfectly fitted the celebrity, ‘free market’, globalisation, neoliberal and of course tax-free requirements beloved of Conservatives, as the answer to all their prayers. How many ventilators did he produce? How well did they perform? How many were actually used by the NHS; I would genuinely be interested to know the answers? Somehow it all very quickly escaped from public view (usually a bad sign), and all subsequent interest in it by the cosy Conservative media disappeared, like snow off a dyke. How much did that experiment cost the UK?
Wholly appropriate questions John
Thanks
I’ve heard similar stories from people involved in pre-COVID medical testing and tracing or in procurement of PPE – that businesses already active in these spaces were ignored by the government (either not asked, or not replied to when they put themselves forward) in favour of giving contracts to big businesses with no track record.
As I understand it, there was a conditional contract ordering 10,000 ventilators from Dyson subject to the device being approved by the medical regulator, but the number of Dyson ventilators delivered to the NHS was exactly zero. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52409359 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/24/dyson-will-not-supply-ventilators-to-nhs-to-treat-covid-19 To their credit they say they have taken no public funding, although the tax waivers count as an implicit subsidy.
Other businesses with no track record in ventilator technology were equally unsuccessful – Formula 1 teams, Babcock, etc. What worked better was adapting existing designs. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/mar/31/more-orders-for-nhs-ventilators-covid19 https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/apr/21/we-made-right-choice-in-ventilator-race-says-uk-consortium-head
But even they were not required. https://www.sagentia.com/insights/the-uk-ventilator-challenge-a-developers-story-questions-answers-and-the-poll-review/
It looks like the new contracts were cancelled once circumstances changed and it turned out that huge numbers of new ventilators were not needed, but it would be interesting to know how much was spent and what was achieved. As you say, it has all gone suspiciously quiet.
Like so much else….
It would be useful to hear the full explanation, and all the answers from Helen Prentis; as this is the source of the claim that lives were saved by this effort. I asked this as a genuine question because the whole event, on which so much media time was lavished during the crisis (I trust not as a matter of celebrity deflection of public attention, or simply yet another Conservative folly; heaven forfend), simply vanished from public view or inspection before it actually produced anything substantive at all for public scrutiny, and media interest vanished; and I am growing a little fatigued by the endless resort to assertion by apologists for the Conservative government, presented as if it was a self-justifying form of evidence. By all means – prove your point, with detailed facts and a usable audit trail to your sources.
Well said
I think the highest you can put it is that there was a widespread concern about potential shortages of ventilators, and in that context special measures to create new supplies were necessary, not just speeding up existing production lines but also repurposing other production facilities to make the same existing models, and in the somewhat longer term designing new models and getting them into production too. Thankfully they were not needed. No Dyson ventilators were deployed in the field and no lives were saved by the Dyson ventilator.
But nor was this cost saving required
Its aim was to cut cost per ventilator, which were being sold at cost to the NHS
So, the net cost to HMG was the same in either case but Dyson might have gained a competitive advantage
That was corruption, not necessity, at work
My point is slightly different. I still do not know how many ventilators Dyson produced; I do not know under what regulatory supervision they received (to ensure the ventialtors were designed and built to the appropriate medical standard – Dyson aft all, as far as I know is basically a vacuum cleaner manufacturer, not a producer of medical products). I do not know what standard of performance the Dyson ventilator produced. I do not even know if anything at all was produced. I do not know how many were produced. I do not know why the whole scheme simply disappeared from observation or scrutiney without any public product or explanation whatsoever (which speaks volumes for where the UK media biases rest).
‘Andrew’ has not provided the answer to my questions, nor has he provided the sources through which an independent reader can check the facts. My argument is not with Andrew. My questions are directed at apologists for the Conservative government who have found out how easy it is to play the game of ‘spin’; make assertions you do not support with evidence or sources, and move on, triumphant in the belief you have somehow ‘won’ (they know not what they do); expecting the reader will accept the story and forget about the rest.
I call again on Helen Prentis (who presented no case at all, but relied on rhetorical flourishes about ‘nails in coffins’ and ‘life saving efforts’ without offering a single usable fact), for there remains unanswered a moral requirement for her to ‘stand-up’ her assertions; to make the case for her accusatory claims and not just ‘spin’ a story built on blind assertions. We should all now declare ‘enough’ of this egregious practice, because it is not innocent, but deliberate and insidious. It is just too easy for the lazy and biased to do, without requiring either thought or effort: It turns discussion into a barren desert, the desert this Conservative government is creating from the remnants of our decaying politics.
I gave you some links to some contemporaneous new reports above, John, so there was some media attention at the time.
As for review, this might help: https://www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Investigation-into-how-the-Government-increased-the-number-of-ventilators.pdf For example, see the timeline on page 38 and the list on page 39, and the costs in appendix 6 which details expenditure of about £292 million by DHSC, mostly securing products from existing suppliers which seems to be included to obscure the £277m spent by the Cabinet Office on the “challenge” programme. Big chunks paid to PA Consulting – almost £12m for “project management” – and about £150m paid to three suppliers for 15,000 new machines (two of them also existing suppliers) and about £100m paid to others (£86m development costs and £23m to designers).
Dyson said they spent £20m and took nothing for CoVent, but TTP was paid £6.5m. https://www.ttp.com/work/cases/covent-ttps-rapid-manufacture-ventilator-for-covid-19-patients
Thanks
What does “extra” mean? I presume HMRC is only asking what is due under our tax laws.
… but you have given me an idea – must ring my old mate Boris and see if he sort out the “extra” income tax I will pay this year on the work I did.
I am sorry to persist, but I am looking to Helen Prentis, who made the accusations to justify them; and nobody else. Indeed the answers offered, while informative do not address the question why it was thought appropriate to consider Dyson an appropriate place to go for a solution. There were specialists in the sector whose help, it appears (from media coverage at the time) was not sought. What criteria of selection did the Government use? Why Dyson – at all? Why not a crinkle-cut crisp producer, or an aircraft manufacturer?
We are supposed to be seduced by the argument that in a desperate crisis, a Government in a deep hole must seek a remedy where it can. That still does not explain the choice of Dyson, since there were others, with a more appropriate background, the Government does nt appear to have approached. It also simply evades a deeper question; why was the Government in this hole? The bland answer that it was short of ventilators begs the question: why was Britain short of ventilators? It was not simply because of the pandemic alone.
I suggest reading Adrian O’Dowd, ‘Covid-19: Government was too slow to respond to ventilator shortages, say MPs’; BMJ 2020;371:m4594 (November, 2020); https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4594:
They did not even know how many ventilators the NHS possessed as the crisis unfolded, but the estimate was only around 7.400; when they thought they may need 59,000; the system survived by: “Good luck rather than design …. “. The MPs conclusion was that “the government had had no plan in place before the pandemic to source the additional critical care equipment that would be needed in an emergency.” We should remember that was in spite of the Government having been warned of the liklihood of a pandemic, and confirmation in 2016 that its planning for that emergency was wholly inadequate (Operation Cygnus).
Instead, the Government had ploughed on with an austerity programme that reduced the nation’s Public Health resource and the capacity of the NHS to meet such a crisis. This was a fundamental failure of the Government to protect the safety and security of its citiczens, or put it first.
It is striking to compare the 7,400 ventilators in Britain at the time, with the comparable figure in Germany of around 26,000 ventilators; indeed, the German Army actually donated 60 mobile ventilators to the NHS (Guardian, 8th April, 2020). Their reward is for the British and their media gratuitously to sneer at everything done in Germany, or the EU over the whole pandemic (forgetting it was a German research institution that inspired the Pfizer vaccine; but of course, the Germans did not stick a flag on their invention, or corner the vaccine output).
don’t forget Dyson’s support for Brexit…
Dyson could have adjusted his price of the ventilators to take account of tax. He is supposed to be a brilliant entrepreneur and have knowledge of basic accounting but maybe his long success has made him more careless and susceptible to the greed instinct.
You can’t ignore the ulterior motives in this story:-
Rich billionaire sympathetic to BREXIT…
….’one of us’ chumocracy………….
….fast track private procurement contracts (mustn’t let NHS/public system look good)…..
…potential for party funding/free money at the next election….
…the cycle continues………….
…Thousand Year Tory Reich.
It’s bloody obvious isn’t it?
This chummy relationship, and the willingness of Johnson and Sunak to ignore (fix) the tax system, seems to work only in certain circumstances. In November 2020 when Nicola Sturgeon announced that a £500 bonus would be given to Scotland’s healthcare staff in grateful recognition of their extraordinary efforts in dealing with Covid, she pleaded with Sunak to allow them the full amount in their paypackets. His refusal to make any exceptions resulted in tax and NI being deducted as well as (I believe) UC payments being clawed back.
When Wales made a similar payment it had to be increased to £735 to cover deductions, which of course return to Westminster.
I don’t suppose Johnson has given his personal phone number to Nicola Sturgeon or Mark Drakeford.
Good point
With the best will in the world it is hardly an earth-shattering revelation that when the UK government really wants something they give people tax exemptions.
You only need to look at an international sports event like the Olympics when a blanket tax exemption was given and that definitely wasn’t a matter of life or death …
But every country in the world that hosts the Olympics gives that to all who attend
It’s not a personal deal