| The National Audit Office has previously expressed concern over the lack of transparency in relation to procurement decisions made in the PPE VIP lane. The revelation that key elements of VIP Test and Trace procurement were conducted using a private gmail address piles fuel on that fire.
How could civil servants monitor discussions between Ministerial contacts and an industry secondee when they were taking place via private gmail addresses?
Back in October, Good Law Project revealed the red carpet-to-riches VIP lane that benefited so many associates of Ministers by helping them to win vast PPE contracts. This new evidence corroborates reports in November from unnamed insiders that there was a VIP channel for testing supplies. The total spend on Test and Trace is £37bn, dwarfing that for PPE.
Responding to Good Law Project, Simon Greaves said: ‘I used a DHSC email account and computer for the majority of my time...'' but also confirmed he used his personal gmail account from his start date in April through to May.
Good Law Project has also approached the DHSC for comment.
Further questions need to be asked about how Government came to spend over £3bn - without any competition - with Innova, whose testing kits have been described by the US Food and Drug Administration as “presenting a risk to health” and subject to “the most serious type of recall.” Good Law Project understands extraordinary new revelations about Innova will emerge in the coming days.
Thank you,
Jo Maugham
Director of Good Law Project |
Corruption comes in many forms. Recently I sent a Type 1 Opt out form to my GP to prevent my medical data being shared except for direct medical care. I need not have bothered. My local health trust, Somerset, has entered into a contract to supply personal medical data to a private company. There was no consultation, no announcement, no explanatory information, no permission sought and of course no opt out. So now when my doctor consults with colleagues at the hospital that data becomes the property of the trust, just another commodity to be traded. If you can’t trust the medical profession then ‘something stinks in the state of England’. They join the cabinet, some police forces, the corporations as agencies depleting my democratic and human rights.
Here once again, we see Neo-liberalism’s agnotological practice at work:
1. Starve the state delivery mechanisms of cash and resources.
2. Artificially create a crisis.
3. To create the need the break the rules.
4. Offer the private sector/your chums juicy contracts to fill the gap you have created intentionally.
5. Make sure those filling the gap are well paid of course.
6. And thus, the public becomes private.
Have we seen anything different to this since 1979? I would say we haven’t and now it is just more brazen.
I think we have to be careful of falling into the ‘they’re all the same’ trap. That damages the left as much as the right and is just what the current mobsters want. Discredit Parliament and the state. See George Lakoff and ‘framing’. Yes privatisation started under Thatcher and continued under Blair, though with a different rationale (hiding ‘debt’). I’d even argue that New Labours indulgence of the City and PFI/privatisations were bigger sins than Iraq in their impact on the British state and public. And yes I was on the Iraq march.
However, we did not see anything remotely like the barefaced corruption of the current Tory government under either Thatcher or Blair. The widespread giving of huge contracts to mates and donors, however ill equipped to do the job. All accompanied by cover-ups, lying and evasion as the norm. That and undermining Parliament itself.
So we should be clear- this government is very different to anything we have seen before. That way they can be damaged in the eyes of Tory voters. Though self-inflicted wounds are popular on the left, it might be a good idea to avoid them if Labour are to get back into power. Especially when they are unjustified.
Focus attention just on the extraordinary corruption of this government.