Stop voting for fucking Tories

[ScarfaceClaw]

The Property Development deals they've been giving out are black and white corruption. The Jenrick one was just last year.

The thing is people just don't care about corruption. PPE is waved out as they're doing the best, property development ones just aren't discussed.

I don’t get how Jenrick isn’t being done for that. It’ll all been brushed aside and forgotten.

[dpedin]

The Property Development deals they've been giving out are black and white corruption. The Jenrick one was just last year.

The thing is people just don't care about corruption. PPE is waved out as they're doing the best, property development ones just aren't discussed.

I don’t get how Jenrick isn’t being done for that. It’ll all been brushed aside and forgotten.

Maybe it was just a 'technical' breach?

[SaintK]

Well, that appointment went well then? "Untenable" in two weeks flat. Probably failed the Princess NutNuts and Dilyn the dog test

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk ... 4860.html

Ha ha ha ha

Sounds vrery much like internecine war still going on in 10 Downing St despite the removal of Cummings and Cain. Lots of briefings that "her in the flat upstairs" appears to be heavily influencing key appointments.

Didn't realise the once very powerful Bow Group were still in existence. They appear to think that there is a lot of influence coming from the flat upstairs

[Hal Jordan]

So now they are concerned about the influence of eminences grises on our easily distracted Prime Minister, and are keen on judicial review, no less.

[SaintK]

Hancock rewriting history! No national shortage, tell that to all the health and care workers wh couldn't get any and exposed themselves to Covid

What’s more, it’s easy to ask these questions, but what is hard is to deliver PPE in the teeth of a pandemic. And that’s what my team did. And yes, there were individual challenges in access to PPE, but we never had a national shortage, because of my team.

Not sure who is the scummiest here
[media] [/media]

[dpedin]

Hancock rewriting history! No national shortage, tell that to all the health and care workers wh couldn't get any and exposed themselves to Covid

What’s more, it’s easy to ask these questions, but what is hard is to deliver PPE in the teeth of a pandemic. And that’s what my team did. And yes, there were individual challenges in access to PPE, but we never had a national shortage, because of my team.

Not sure who is the scummiest here
[media] [/media]

Hancock is a cnut!

[sockwithaticket]

Hancock rewriting history! No national shortage, tell that to all the health and care workers wh couldn't get any and exposed themselves to Covid

What’s more, it’s easy to ask these questions, but what is hard is to deliver PPE in the teeth of a pandemic. And that’s what my team did. And yes, there were individual challenges in access to PPE, but we never had a national shortage, because of my team.

Not sure who is the scummiest here
[media] [/media]

Morgan's an arse, always has been and always will be, but Hancock's acting like a sulky teenager because people won't line up to kiss his arse for presiding over the doling out of public cash to Tory doners/friends and the worst death rate in Europe. He can get huffy over not being allowed to finish his answers, but we need a little bit more of British journos (stretching the term) actually calling politicians on their bullshit claims in real time.

[Insane_Homer]

I see Handoncock has removed the picture of his neighbour/mate's pub from the wall behind him since his last TV appearances

[Sandstorm]

Piers Morgan is a cunt, but he has constantly grilled politicians (digitally) face-to-face throughout the pandemic and put the spotlight on a lot of their failures.

[SaintK]

Hancock rewriting history! No national shortage, tell that to all the health and care workers wh couldn't get any and exposed themselves to Covid

What’s more, it’s easy to ask these questions, but what is hard is to deliver PPE in the teeth of a pandemic. And that’s what my team did. And yes, there were individual challenges in access to PPE, but we never had a national shortage, because of my team.

Spoiler

Show

Not sure who is the scummiest here
[media] [/media]

Press Association jogging Hancock's memory as to the truth

The PA news agency spoke to numerous doctors as the coronavirus crisis unfolded last year about their experience with PPE. These included:

- An obstetrician at a London hospital who described how staff were “hiding” PPE out of sheer desperation.

- An orderly at the same hospital made themselves a makeshift face covering out of an eye mask usually used for sleeping.

- Another doctor compared the situation to sending a soldier to war without the necessary equipment.

- A junior doctor who said it felt like it was “inevitable” that they would contract the virus due to a lack of PPE.

- One GP told PA they had purchased face shields from the online retailer Amazon as they could not get them through the traditional supply chains.

In March last year, the Royal College of Nursing said that some nurses were sent to treat patients on Covid wards with “no protection at all”.

One desperate NHS procurement chief tweeted: “God help us all”.

And the Health Care Supply Association (HCSA), which represents procurement and supply professionals within the healthcare sector in the UK, warned of “serious supply issues” in hospitals.

Meanwhile, consultant urologist Dr Abdul Mabud Chowdhury died from Covid-19 five days after writing a Facebook post asking Prime Minister Boris Johnson to urgently provide every NHS worker with personal protective equipment.

[Biffer]

So now they are concerned about the influence of eminences grises on our easily distracted Prime Minister, and are keen on judicial review, no less.

Now that it's a woman.

[Insane_Homer]

https://metro.co.uk/2021/02/23/matt-han ... op.twitter

"we've nothing to hide..." but

Matt Hancock’s heavily redacted pandemic contracts even hide colour of NHS gowns


Read more: https://metro.co.uk/2021/02/23/matt-han ... to=cbshare

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MetroUK | Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MetroUK/

[dpedin]

Yesterday the court has granted a cost capping order to Good Law Project. Gov had said their costs would be over £1m to defend the cases re request for judicial review of award contracts to without advertisement or competition to Pestfix, Ayanda, and Clandboye. In effect the Gov were trying to scare off anyone asking questions of their procurement process by threatening huge costs involved if Gov won and costs had to be covered. In effect using our taxpayers money to protect their dodgy (my words) procurement via mates and Tory Party donors! Costs are limited to £100k. Interesting that the companies involved have also been threatening huge costs if taken to court by the GLP, again using our money they got through huge profits via dodgy contracts (my words) to stop us looking to see our money was used properly. No wonder Hancock was getting a bit tetchy yesterday as his lawyers had probably told him their tactics were likely to fail and he would be grilled in lots more detail via judicial review. He must feel the noose tightening?

[JM2K6]

What exactly do you two believe the repercussions should be? Explain the breach and what the the repercussions should be.

Well, the fact that a high court judge has found against Hancock and stated that his department have unlawfully witheld details of £100's of millions of contracts that have been awarded to "friends" donors and financial supporters of of the Tory Party, the least that should be done immediately is to publish the full details of all the contracts and the rationale in awarding them rather than hide behind a wall of seecrecy.
Longer term when a formal review of the government's handling of the pandemic is held I reckonb that the cronyism and contracts for mates will be way down the list on things that the government will be held to account for. All the mistakes, dithering and delays and wrong decisisons that caused 1000's of unneccesary deaths will of course be at the top of the list in the review.

The High Court found that was a technical breach in that the contracts were not published within 30 days and Hancock admitted it. The contracts were published published on average 17 days late. No judgement was made on the contracts themselves, corruption or cronyism. That’s why beyond the wailings of deranged such as on this thread it has made no traction in the wider public and won’t.

Turns out - surprise! - that the bolded part was deeply disingenuous bollocks.

The Health Secretary has repeatedly claimed the average delay in publishing documents was 'about a fortnight'. In fact by November the average time was 78 days - almost three times the 30 day limit.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/ ... 3-23552910

[dpedin]

Well, the fact that a high court judge has found against Hancock and stated that his department have unlawfully witheld details of £100's of millions of contracts that have been awarded to "friends" donors and financial supporters of of the Tory Party, the least that should be done immediately is to publish the full details of all the contracts and the rationale in awarding them rather than hide behind a wall of seecrecy.
Longer term when a formal review of the government's handling of the pandemic is held I reckonb that the cronyism and contracts for mates will be way down the list on things that the government will be held to account for. All the mistakes, dithering and delays and wrong decisisons that caused 1000's of unneccesary deaths will of course be at the top of the list in the review.

The High Court found that was a technical breach in that the contracts were not published within 30 days and Hancock admitted it. The contracts were published published on average 17 days late. No judgement was made on the contracts themselves, corruption or cronyism. That’s why beyond the wailings of deranged such as on this thread it has made no traction in the wider public and won’t.

Turns out - surprise! - that the bolded part was deeply disingenuous bollocks.

The Health Secretary has repeatedly claimed the average delay in publishing documents was 'about a fortnight'. In fact by November the average time was 78 days - almost three times the 30 day limit.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/ ... 3-23552910

That'll be a 'technical' fortnight?

[dpedin]

Yesterday the court has granted a cost capping order to Good Law Project. Gov had said their costs would be over £1m to defend the cases re request for judicial review of award contracts to without advertisement or competition to Pestfix, Ayanda, and Clandboye. In effect the Gov were trying to scare off anyone asking questions of their procurement process by threatening huge costs involved if Gov won and costs had to be covered. In effect using our taxpayers money to protect their dodgy (my words) procurement via mates and Tory Party donors! Costs are limited to £100k. Interesting that the companies involved have also been threatening huge costs if taken to court by the GLP, again using our money they got through huge profits via dodgy contracts (my words) to stop us looking to see our money was used properly. No wonder Hancock was getting a bit tetchy yesterday as his lawyers had probably told him their tactics were likely to fail and he would be grilled in lots more detail via judicial review. He must feel the noose tightening?

Made a mistake - costs are capped at £250k. Still a hefty sum.

[fishfoodie]

Yesterday the court has granted a cost capping order to Good Law Project. Gov had said their costs would be over £1m to defend the cases re request for judicial review of award contracts to without advertisement or competition to Pestfix, Ayanda, and Clandboye. In effect the Gov were trying to scare off anyone asking questions of their procurement process by threatening huge costs involved if Gov won and costs had to be covered. In effect using our taxpayers money to protect their dodgy (my words) procurement via mates and Tory Party donors! Costs are limited to £100k. Interesting that the companies involved have also been threatening huge costs if taken to court by the GLP, again using our money they got through huge profits via dodgy contracts (my words) to stop us looking to see our money was used properly. No wonder Hancock was getting a bit tetchy yesterday as his lawyers had probably told him their tactics were likely to fail and he would be grilled in lots more detail via judicial review. He must feel the noose tightening?

Made a mistake - costs are capped at £250k. Still a hefty sum.

They should just get a contract for supplying PPE to the NHS; 250k probably works out as 5 plastic bags; sorry aprons, & some filters, that look suspiciously like cut up newspaper.

[Insane_Homer]

[Insane_Homer]

[fishfoodie]

It's always the Tories that complained about how PMs needed to be paid more to; "attract the best people".

It turns out that the; "best people"; are thieving scumbags.

[Tichtheid]

New BBC chair managed firm that funded controversial property company

The BBC has played a pivotal role exposing the scale and scope of legal offshore tax avoidance in crown dependencies, through its partnerships in the Panama Papers and Paradise Papers investigations.

The Guardian’s disclosures put a spotlight on the BBC’s new chair as he begins a four-year posting that could determine the future of the corporation, and whether it will still be funded by the licence fee.

A former banker who counts the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, as a friend, and who advised Boris Johnson while he was London mayor, Sharp has donated more than £400,000 to the Conservative party over the last 20 years.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/ ... ld-caridon

[Sandstorm]

It's always the Tories that complained about how PMs needed to be paid more to; "attract the best people".

It turns out that the; "best people"; are thieving scumbags.

5 months to investigate a travel claim? I check 15 from my team every week & queries are sorted behind the bins in 10 mins flat!

[SaintK]

It's always the Tories that complained about how PMs needed to be paid more to; "attract the best people".

It turns out that the; "best people"; are thieving scumbags.

5 months to investigate a travel claim? I check 15 from my team every week & queries are sorted behind the bins in 10 mins flat!

He comes over as the most entitled cunt of the lot of them. Have yet to come across a reedeeming feature in the chinless wonder

[Hal Jordan]

Ex-corporate lawyer in cunt shock.

[I like neeps]

So the govts plan to turn generation rent into generation buy isn't increasing supply but increasing demand with the return of 5% deposit mortgages. Great stuff... Except it's not limited to first time buyers it's open to anyone! After the help to buy success of increasing prices they're trying it again. Nothing but landlordism.

It really is amazing they've got this to be reported as a scheme for first time buyers when its open to everyone. And how they've got what everyone knows is artificially keeping prices high a sensible free market policy.

[dpedin]

So the govts plan to turn generation rent into generation buy isn't increasing supply but increasing demand with the return of 5% deposit mortgages. Great stuff... Except it's not limited to first time buyers it's open to anyone! After the help to buy success of increasing prices they're trying it again. Nothing but landlordism.

It really is amazing they've got this to be reported as a scheme for first time buyers when its open to everyone. And how they've got what everyone knows is artificially keeping prices high a sensible free market policy.

Yep - we are being scammed again!

[Paddington Bear]

Controversially I think reducing deposits will help get people onto the ladder. I’d be a reliable person to lend to but struggle to find 50k plus for a deposit.

[Biffer]

So the govts plan to turn generation rent into generation buy isn't increasing supply but increasing demand with the return of 5% deposit mortgages. Great stuff... Except it's not limited to first time buyers it's open to anyone! After the help to buy success of increasing prices they're trying it again. Nothing but landlordism.

It really is amazing they've got this to be reported as a scheme for first time buyers when its open to everyone. And how they've got what everyone knows is artificially keeping prices high a sensible free market policy.

We've built a consumer driven economy over the last thirty years. That fundamentally relies on high House prices to build confidence and acceptance of easy credit.

If they let house prices decrease the entire economic model goes up in smoke.

[I like neeps]

Controversially I think reducing deposits will help get people onto the ladder. I’d be a reliable person to lend to but struggle to find 50k plus for a deposit.

I think it'll help some yes but why not limit the 5% to actual first time buyers like yourself rather than anyone? Or why not say we're building X number of houses specifically for first time buyers.

I also think there should be formalised rent management so if you have a 3-4 years experience of paying 800pm means you're more likely to get a 700pm mortgage as you've shown you can keep up with payments.

[Paddington Bear]

Controversially I think reducing deposits will help get people onto the ladder. I’d be a reliable person to lend to but struggle to find 50k plus for a deposit.

I think it'll help some yes but why not limit the 5% to actual first time buyers like yourself rather than anyone? Or why not say we're building X number of houses specifically for first time buyers.

I also think there should be formalised rent management so if you have a 3-4 years experience of paying 800pm means you're more likely to get a 700pm mortgage as you've shown you can keep up with payments.

Yeah seems fair to me. Always seems bizarre that paying x rent for years doesn’t really seem to factor into mortgage affordability

[Hal Jordan]

The housing market has been doped more times than the Ultimate Warrior.

[ohno]

Well, the fact that a high court judge has found against Hancock and stated that his department have unlawfully witheld details of £100's of millions of contracts that have been awarded to "friends" donors and financial supporters of of the Tory Party, the least that should be done immediately is to publish the full details of all the contracts and the rationale in awarding them rather than hide behind a wall of seecrecy.
Longer term when a formal review of the government's handling of the pandemic is held I reckonb that the cronyism and contracts for mates will be way down the list on things that the government will be held to account for. All the mistakes, dithering and delays and wrong decisisons that caused 1000's of unneccesary deaths will of course be at the top of the list in the review.

The High Court found that was a technical breach in that the contracts were not published within 30 days and Hancock admitted it. The contracts were published published on average 17 days late. No judgement was made on the contracts themselves, corruption or cronyism. That’s why beyond the wailings of deranged such as on this thread it has made no traction in the wider public and won’t.

Turns out - surprise! - that the bolded part was deeply disingenuous bollocks.

The Health Secretary has repeatedly claimed the average delay in publishing documents was 'about a fortnight'. In fact by November the average time was 78 days - almost three times the 30 day limit.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/ ... 3-23552910

Naughty of Mr Hancock if he knew it was that long, but still doesn’t change or invalidate my points about what the judgement was about despite the wibbles of the deranged. The judgement found and only found that the Secretary state was unlawful in publishing the contracts late. It didn’t find any cover up, find any dodgy contracts, set any new or useful precedents on standing. These things may come but they didn’t happen here.

[Insane_Homer]

Naughty of Mr Hancock if he knew it was that long, but still doesn’t change or invalidate my points about what the judgement was about despite the wibbles of the deranged. The judgement found and only found that the Secretary state was unlawful in publishing the contracts late. It didn’t find any cover up, find any dodgy contracts, set any new or useful precedents on standing. These things may come but they didn’t happen here.

https://goodlawproject.org/update/civil ... -for-no10/

Emails read to the High Court yesterday showed that civil servants in the Department of Health and Social Care were asked unlawfully to delay meeting their obligations to publish procurement contracts to meet the convenience of No.10 Special Advisers.
...
“we are in legal breach. As we are already in breach I would rather we published as soon as possible. If Press Office do want to delay it would be a good idea to set out the reasons for that in a short note” but adding “it needs to go on No10 grid.”

That is, requests to break the law came from within No 10.

[ohno]

Naughty of Mr Hancock if he knew it was that long, but still doesn’t change or invalidate my points about what the judgement was about despite the wibbles of the deranged. The judgement found and only found that the Secretary state was unlawful in publishing the contracts late. It didn’t find any cover up, find any dodgy contracts, set any new or useful precedents on standing. These things may come but they didn’t happen here.

https://goodlawproject.org/update/civil ... -for-no10/

Emails read to the High Court yesterday showed that civil servants in the Department of Health and Social Care were asked unlawfully to delay meeting their obligations to publish procurement contracts to meet the convenience of No.10 Special Advisers.
...
“we are in legal breach. As we are already in breach I would rather we published as soon as possible. If Press Office do want to delay it would be a good idea to set out the reasons for that in a short note” but adding “it needs to go on No10 grid.”

That is, requests to break the law came from within No 10.

See below:

Issue (c): Was there a deliberate policy of deprioritising compliance with transparency obligations?
120 This issue can be dealt with very shortly. The Claimants’ pleaded allegation (see SFG, para. 36) was this:
“In circumstances of widespread breach by the Defendant of regulation 50 and of the Transparency Policy and Transparency Principles, it is apparent that the Defendant – whether personally or through his officials – has made and approved a conscious decision to de -prioritise compliance wit h regulation 50 and with the Transparency Policy and Principles.”
121 That allegation is squarely addressed and squarely denied by the Secretary of State both in the response to the letter before claim (see para. 36 above) and in Mr Webb’s first statement (see para. 51 above).
122 A court hearing a claim for judicial review normally accepts the written evidence of the defendant unless exceptionally there is an application to cross-examine the deponent or it is obviously in conflict with other written evidence before the court.
123 In this case, there was no application to cross-examine Mr Webb. The Claimants pointed to a few other documents from which they said a policy of de-prioritising compliance with reg. 50 and the Transparency Policy and Principles could be inferred. In my judgment, none of these comes close to providing a proper basis for going behind Mr Webb’s clear denial that such a policy ever existed:
(a) The evidence is clear that, in April 2020, Mr Webb reminded staff responsible for procurement of the importance of adherence to transparency obligations, including the obligation imposed by reg. 50.
(b) An email of 3 September 2020 indicates that the Government’s Chief Commercial Officer (Gareth Rhys-Williams) was seeking an explanation for the Department’s non-compliance. A further email of 2 October indicates that he had “requested that we accelerate compliance”. This hardly evidences a deliberate policy of de- prioritisation.
(c) There is some material to suggest that the urgency with which compliance was pursued was driven by inquiries from the press and by the threat of legal proceedings: see Mr Webb’s emails of 14 May 2020 (drawing attention to a potential article in The Guardian about non-compliance) and 25 August 2020 (following receipt of the Claimants’ letter before claim). But this does not show “a conscious decision to de-prioritise compliance” beforehand.
124 The Claimants’ ground 3 is, therefore, not made out

[Jasonstry]

Naughty of Mr Hancock if he knew it was that long, but still doesn’t change or invalidate my points about what the judgement was about despite the wibbles of the deranged. The judgement found and only found that the Secretary state was unlawful in publishing the contracts late. It didn’t find any cover up, find any dodgy contracts, set any new or useful precedents on standing. These things may come but they didn’t happen here.

https://goodlawproject.org/update/civil ... -for-no10/

Emails read to the High Court yesterday showed that civil servants in the Department of Health and Social Care were asked unlawfully to delay meeting their obligations to publish procurement contracts to meet the convenience of No.10 Special Advisers.
...
“we are in legal breach. As we are already in breach I would rather we published as soon as possible. If Press Office do want to delay it would be a good idea to set out the reasons for that in a short note” but adding “it needs to go on No10 grid.”

That is, requests to break the law came from within No 10.

While the idea seems sound in principle, I am far from convinced by the idea of crowd funding legal actions and I am not alone in that. OK, my background is law but it was long ago and not at a high level. I had a quick skim through the judgement and, while GLP present it as a big victory, I don't see it that way at all. In fact, I think the court made it very clear that there was no evidence of a general policy to delay publication of contracts and, while they agreed that the GLP could have standing to bring the action on the basis of a very broad interpretation of the requirement, they rejected the idea that MPs could do so, which might have been game changing if the court had any significant authority, which it doesn't. The judgement reported the exchange of documents before the hearing (they didn't have to do that) in which the government stated that they fully accepted that there were delays in getting copies of contracts out on time but argued that their focus was on getting as much PPE as they could, from whatever sources they could find, to protect front line staff and that, the judicial review had just taken staff away from doing that as well as preventing them from actually getting on with the secondary job of publishing contracts as GLP wanted. The court accepted that this was a good excuse but not a legal justification so GLP won. Of course, GLP have to report this as a major success as they rely on crowd funding and, if they report that they failed to meet their major objectives, they will fade into unfunded oblivion in short order. As they probably should.

What a complete waste of time and money.

I gather that GLP are applying for a Judicial Review to force the government to start a formal inquiry into their handling of the epidemic right away as well as a few more relating to specific contracts for PPE. We are all paying for this. More lawyers get rich.

OhNo seems to be a bit ahead of me...

[dpedin]

Naughty of Mr Hancock if he knew it was that long, but still doesn’t change or invalidate my points about what the judgement was about despite the wibbles of the deranged. The judgement found and only found that the Secretary state was unlawful in publishing the contracts late. It didn’t find any cover up, find any dodgy contracts, set any new or useful precedents on standing. These things may come but they didn’t happen here.

https://goodlawproject.org/update/civil ... -for-no10/

Emails read to the High Court yesterday showed that civil servants in the Department of Health and Social Care were asked unlawfully to delay meeting their obligations to publish procurement contracts to meet the convenience of No.10 Special Advisers.
...
“we are in legal breach. As we are already in breach I would rather we published as soon as possible. If Press Office do want to delay it would be a good idea to set out the reasons for that in a short note” but adding “it needs to go on No10 grid.”

That is, requests to break the law came from within No 10.

While the idea seems sound in principle, I am far from convinced by the idea of crowd funding legal actions and I am not alone in that. OK, my background is law but it was long ago and not at a high level. I had a quick skim through the judgement and, while GLP present it as a big victory, I don't see it that way at all. In fact, I think the court made it very clear that there was no evidence of a general policy to delay publication of contracts and, while they agreed that the GLP could have standing to bring the action on the basis of a very broad interpretation of the requirement, they rejected the idea that MPs could do so, which might have been game changing if the court had any significant authority, which it doesn't. The judgement reported the exchange of documents before the hearing (they didn't have to do that) in which the government stated that they fully accepted that there were delays in getting copies of contracts out on time but argued that their focus was on getting as much PPE as they could, from whatever sources they could find, to protect front line staff and that, the judicial review had just taken staff away from doing that as well as preventing them from actually getting on with the secondary job of publishing contracts as GLP wanted. The court accepted that this was a good excuse but not a legal justification so GLP won. Of course, GLP have to report this as a major success as they rely on crowd funding and, if they report that they failed to meet their major objectives, they will fade into unfunded oblivion in short order. As they probably should.

What a complete waste of time and money.

I gather that GLP are applying for a Judicial Review to force the government to start a formal inquiry into their handling of the epidemic right away as well as a few more relating to specific contracts for PPE. We are all paying for this. More lawyers get rich.

OhNo seems to be a bit ahead of me...

I have no problem that crowd funding can be used for legal actions, it sort of levels the playing field a little when the UK Gov is quoting huge (inflated?) costs for cases which may be designed to put off legal action? We have all already paid billions of pounds for contracts for PPE and other services, many of which are dodgy (my words!) and have failed to deliver at all or where many have the products delivered have been sub standard and could not be used for the purposes intended. There are numerous examples of this which have been well documented.

Again, like the term 'technical' breach of the law, I am not sure what 'broad interpretation' means? The court found that the GLP had standing, a straightforward interpretation of the law. The decision was important because the court decided you didnt need to be an economic operator in order to bring a case and that there was a powerful public interest in the resolution of the issues raised. The UK Gov had sought to have the case dismissed on the grounds that the GLP didnt have standing so it was an important decision.

The court did not reject the idea that MPs had standing but decided that as it had already decided the GLP had standing, then there was no need to accord standing to the other claimants' see para 106 below

'I have no doubt that they have a genuine and sincere interest in the issues the subject of this litigation. The fact that someone is a Member of Parliament does not, in and of itself, prevent her from having standing. But the availability of a better placed challenger remains an important – and often determinative – factor in considering whether it is necessary to accord standing to a person who is not herself directly affected by the decision challenged or the relief sought. Where there is already a claimant or claimants with standing, there is no reason to accord standing to additional parties

It did however express concern about the MPs getting involved and their desire to pursue a political cause - see para 107.

I agree, it was a complete waste of time and money but it was the UK Govs decision to try and defend the indefensible that led to this case getting to court, they had themselves as good as admitted they had broken the law but decided to go ahead with the court case anyway, probably to try and deter further cases they knew were coming down the line. Looking to seek to recover costs should the claimants lose, and then inflate costs, is often a tactic used to deter cases coming to court. Indeed the UK Gov used this very tactic with the GLP, seeking £1m costs for next cases, but luckily the GLP managed to get the courts to cap costs in that case to 250k.

I am delighted that the GLP is bringing further cases and, if successful and the money given to companies that failed to deliver on huge contracts is recovered, then this will cover any UK Gov court costs many many times over!

[ohno]

Naughty of Mr Hancock if he knew it was that long, but still doesn’t change or invalidate my points about what the judgement was about despite the wibbles of the deranged. The judgement found and only found that the Secretary state was unlawful in publishing the contracts late. It didn’t find any cover up, find any dodgy contracts, set any new or useful precedents on standing. These things may come but they didn’t happen here.

https://goodlawproject.org/update/civil ... -for-no10/

Emails read to the High Court yesterday showed that civil servants in the Department of Health and Social Care were asked unlawfully to delay meeting their obligations to publish procurement contracts to meet the convenience of No.10 Special Advisers.
...
“we are in legal breach. As we are already in breach I would rather we published as soon as possible. If Press Office do want to delay it would be a good idea to set out the reasons for that in a short note” but adding “it needs to go on No10 grid.”

That is, requests to break the law came from within No 10.

While the idea seems sound in principle, I am far from convinced by the idea of crowd funding legal actions and I am not alone in that. OK, my background is law but it was long ago and not at a high level. I had a quick skim through the judgement and, while GLP present it as a big victory, I don't see it that way at all. In fact, I think the court made it very clear that there was no evidence of a general policy to delay publication of contracts and, while they agreed that the GLP could have standing to bring the action on the basis of a very broad interpretation of the requirement, they rejected the idea that MPs could do so, which might have been game changing if the court had any significant authority, which it doesn't. The judgement reported the exchange of documents before the hearing (they didn't have to do that) in which the government stated that they fully accepted that there were delays in getting copies of contracts out on time but argued that their focus was on getting as much PPE as they could, from whatever sources they could find, to protect front line staff and that, the judicial review had just taken staff away from doing that as well as preventing them from actually getting on with the secondary job of publishing contracts as GLP wanted. The court accepted that this was a good excuse but not a legal justification so GLP won. Of course, GLP have to report this as a major success as they rely on crowd funding and, if they report that they failed to meet their major objectives, they will fade into unfunded oblivion in short order. As they probably should.

What a complete waste of time and money.

I gather that GLP are applying for a Judicial Review to force the government to start a formal inquiry into their handling of the epidemic right away as well as a few more relating to specific contracts for PPE. We are all paying for this. More lawyers get rich.

OhNo seems to be a bit ahead of me...

I agree with a lot of that but disagree that it is complete waste of time and money, getting a declaration that a SoS and his department acted unlawfully is important, but as you say no way near as serious that they acted unlawfully with intent to do so. It is interesting that they failed to cross examine the evidence given by the defendant about intent. Experienced and knowledgeable lawyers, which they are, would have known their evidence wasn’t going to convince the judge on its own and it looks like in failing to cross examine they had little confidence in winning that point IMO. Which then as you say brings in the whole way the judgement has been presented and the need for crowd funding, I think they felt they needed a win.

In general I am in favour of bodies that act as watchdogs on ‘power’ but they should be subject to scrutiny on their actions too.

[Jasonstry]

https://goodlawproject.org/update/civil ... -for-no10/



That is, requests to break the law came from within No 10.

While the idea seems sound in principle, I am far from convinced by the idea of crowd funding legal actions and I am not alone in that. OK, my background is law but it was long ago and not at a high level. I had a quick skim through the judgement and, while GLP present it as a big victory, I don't see it that way at all. In fact, I think the court made it very clear that there was no evidence of a general policy to delay publication of contracts and, while they agreed that the GLP could have standing to bring the action on the basis of a very broad interpretation of the requirement, they rejected the idea that MPs could do so, which might have been game changing if the court had any significant authority, which it doesn't. The judgement reported the exchange of documents before the hearing (they didn't have to do that) in which the government stated that they fully accepted that there were delays in getting copies of contracts out on time but argued that their focus was on getting as much PPE as they could, from whatever sources they could find, to protect front line staff and that, the judicial review had just taken staff away from doing that as well as preventing them from actually getting on with the secondary job of publishing contracts as GLP wanted. The court accepted that this was a good excuse but not a legal justification so GLP won. Of course, GLP have to report this as a major success as they rely on crowd funding and, if they report that they failed to meet their major objectives, they will fade into unfunded oblivion in short order. As they probably should.

What a complete waste of time and money.

I gather that GLP are applying for a Judicial Review to force the government to start a formal inquiry into their handling of the epidemic right away as well as a few more relating to specific contracts for PPE. We are all paying for this. More lawyers get rich.

OhNo seems to be a bit ahead of me...

I have no problem that crowd funding can be used for legal actions, it sort of levels the playing field a little when the UK Gov is quoting huge (inflated?) costs for cases which may be designed to put off legal action? We have all already paid billions of pounds for contracts for PPE and other services, many of which are dodgy (my words!) and have failed to deliver at all or where many have the products delivered have been sub standard and could not be used for the purposes intended. There are numerous examples of this which have been well documented.

Again, like the term 'technical' breach of the law, I am not sure what 'broad interpretation' means? The court found that the GLP had standing, a straightforward interpretation of the law. The decision was important because the court decided you didnt need to be an economic operator in order to bring a case and that there was a powerful public interest in the resolution of the issues raised. The UK Gov had sought to have the case dismissed on the grounds that the GLP didnt have standing so it was an important decision.

The court did not reject the idea that MPs had standing but decided that as it had already decided the GLP had standing, then there was no need to accord standing to the other claimants' see para 106 below

'I have no doubt that they have a genuine and sincere interest in the issues the subject of this litigation. The fact that someone is a Member of Parliament does not, in and of itself, prevent her from having standing. But the availability of a better placed challenger remains an important – and often determinative – factor in considering whether it is necessary to accord standing to a person who is not herself directly affected by the decision challenged or the relief sought. Where there is already a claimant or claimants with standing, there is no reason to accord standing to additional parties

It did however express concern about the MPs getting involved and their desire to pursue a political cause - see para 107.

I agree, it was a complete waste of time and money but it was the UK Govs decision to try and defend the indefensible that led to this case getting to court, they had themselves as good as admitted they had broken the law but decided to go ahead with the court case anyway, probably to try and deter further cases they knew were coming down the line. Looking to seek to recover costs should the claimants lose, and then inflate costs, is often a tactic used to deter cases coming to court. Indeed the UK Gov used this very tactic with the GLP, seeking £1m costs for next cases, but luckily the GLP managed to get the courts to cap costs in that case to 250k.

I am delighted that the GLP is bringing further cases and, if successful and the money given to companies that failed to deliver on huge contracts is recovered, then this will cover any UK Gov court costs many many times over!

As far as I am aware, the High Court simply does not have the power to decide that you don't have to be an economic operator and can only work on the basis of previous decisions from higher courts. In this instance it was a case from 2009 (Chandler) which stiuplated that it would be permissable for an organisation like GLP to bring an action if it isn't likely that an economic operator would do so. The MPs were jumping on the bandwaqon to try and politicise it even more and they were bounced. All this was decided on the facts of the case, not as a matter of general legal principle as the High Court can't create binding precedent in cases like these.

As to whether the government tried to defend the undefensible, they didn't. TBH, I am not sure if simply admitting an application for Judicial Review is even possible but that isn't really the point as they had to defend it anyway and they did it pretty successfully. Let's be clear, the central complaint wasn't that details of the contracts weren't published on time, it was that there had been “a conscious decision to de-prioritise compliance with regulation 50 and with the Transparency Policy and Principles” Before the action, the government accepted that there were delays in publishing details of contracts and that it was illegal but pointed out that their main efforts were directed at keeping people alive at the time. They suggested (my summary) that the time taken to respond to the application would mean resources would have to be devoted to dealing with it when those resources could be better used to keep people alive and that the time taken up would actually make it harder to publish contract info by the due dates. But they weren't going to let that attack on their policy pass and they weren't going to allow opposition MPs to jump onboard and probably (personally, I am sure they did) thought it would be good to argue the case on standing for GLP on procurement cases.

And what happened? The options for awards available to a court in a judicial review are pretty limited but, as I see it, the court accepted that the government had lots of excuses for not meeting their targets but, quite rightly, said that the failure to publish info on time was still illegal (that had been accepted by the government already) but rejected the idea that MPs could pile in on the end for political purposes and, above, all, rejected the proposed declaration that the government had been following a policy of deliberately delaying publication. So, nothing much was achieved that was different from the government's response before the hearing and a lot of money from tax payers and donaters was handed to lawyers who didn't need it.

Yay.

[Insane_Homer]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/ ... ment-covid

A PR firm owned by Matthew Freud, who was closely associated with the Conservatives during David Cameron’s time as prime minister, was awarded a contract to provide “strategic communications”, including “reputation management”, for England’s beleaguered coronavirus test-and-trace system without a tender process, the Guardian can reveal.

The contract with Freud Communications Limited was for services to be carried out between 1 November last year and 15 January this year but it only came to light after details were published on a government website on 19 February.

They appeared on the same day as a high court judge ruled that Matt Hancock acted unlawfully by failing to publish details of multibillion-pound Covid-19 government contracts within the 30-day period required by law, amid allegations of “chumocracy” and lack of transparency in the awarding of contracts during the pandemic.

Although the start date for the £55,000 contract with Freud Communications was 1 November, the government website says it was awarded on 8 February 2021.

[SaintK]

The blonde slug and her upstairs can't afford to do up 10 Downing St. I'm sure one his rich Russian mates will oblige!

The spokesman refused to deny a Daily Mail report claiming that Boris Johnson discussed asking Tory donors to contribute to paying a personal bill he was facing for renovation work to the Downing Street flat where he lives. The Mail story claimed that, after his partner Carrie Symonds ordered an extravagant refurbishment, Johnson was told that he would have to pay most of the cost himself, and that he discussed asking Tory donors to contribute. Asked about the story, the spokesman just said that details of spending on the Downing Street estate would be published in the Cabinet Office’s annual report.