Our mission is to achieve change through the law.

Bunzl: We’re going to Court

Forget about Greensill. Only last year, a Minister brought a former Chair of the Tory Party, a man who now runs a lobbying firm, into the heart of Government to work on PPE procurement. Having...

Lord Bethell’s new phone

Lord Bethell is the Health Minister responsible for overseeing the award of Covid contracts. His time as Health Minister has been mired in controversy: from failing to declare meetings with firms that won huge Government...

Gavin Williamson accused of unlawful failure to intervene as local authorities put children in care at risk

By Sophia Alexandra Hall  Almost 40% of children in care are being moved outside of their local authority area. Good Law Project has launched a legal challenge to the very high numbers of children in care being...

BREAKING: New emails reveal Government used taxpayers’ money to conduct political polling

Good Law Project had a court hearing last week in connection with our challenge to the award of a lucrative public contract to associates of Michael Gove and Dominic Cummings at Hanbury without competition. Documents we...

We’re recruiting: Director of Partnerships

About Good Law Project We are a small and young organisation but we have been expanding quickly, with increasingly prominent and successful legal cases: we had a primary role in overturning the prorogation of Parliament...

BREAKING: Government admits at least 4 Ministers used private emails for Government business

Following the revelations that disgraced former Health Secretary Matt Hancock and Health Minister Lord Bethell used private email accounts for Government business, our lawyers wrote to Government lawyers asking them to confirm they had searched...

REVEALED: Ministers ignored Government recruitment process to appoint Gina Coladangelo

Documents uncovered by Good Law Project suggest Ministers at the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) abandoned their own recruitment procedures to directly appoint Gina Coladangelo as a non-executive director. We have unearthed a...

We’re recruiting: Editorial Lead

The deadline to apply for this position has now closed. We are currently reviewing applications and will be in touch with successful candidates regarding the next stage. We received a large number of applications for...

REVEALED: Cabinet office Ministers continue to mislead the public over PPE procurement

Last week, Michael Gove the Minister for the Cabinet Office was questioned by MPs on Government procurement during the pandemic. Gove responded in the Commons claiming “every single procurement decision went through an eight-stage process.” During...

Government is appealing

The statement issued by Downing Street when Michael Gove lost the Public First case (“We welcome the judgment”) might almost have made you think he had won. He didn’t of course – and the finding...

Children in care

Time and again local authorities are placing children in care in the cheapest accommodation, rather than the accommodation that best meets their needs. For more than 30,000 children last year, this meant being torn away...

Update: Peter Cruddas

A few weeks ago, Good Law Project wrote to the Prime Minister in respect of its decision to appoint a Conservative Party donor to the House of Lords. The donor, Peter Cruddas, made a donation...

Why are Ministers using private emails?

Boris Johnson, Matt Hancock and Lord Bethell have all been reportedly using private email accounts or WhatsApp for Government business, discussing matters of national importance – from the spread of Covid-19 in care homes to...

The lies that pass for transparency data

On Monday we published a short post, pointing out that the so-called “transparency” data – which is supposed to list all of the external meetings Ministers have – failed to mention a meeting on 1...

NEW: Documents reveal VIP lane for testing contracts

Good Law Project can reveal the existence of a VIP lane for Test and Trace spend – and that ‘VIP stakeholder engagement’ was run from a private gmail address. We are today publishing emails showing the...

We do not believe that is what the law should be or is

The Government Legal Department requires new claims to be served on a particular email address. Our lawyers served (1) on 27 April 2021 an “unsealed” (i.e. yet to be stamped by the Court) copy of...

NEW: leaked emails reveal Health Minister Lord Bethell did use personal email address for Government business

A Number 10 spokesperson has explicitly denied that Government Ministers have used private email addresses: “Both the former health secretary and Lord Bethell understand the rules around personal email usage and only ever conducted government business...

REVEALED: Health Minister Lord Bethell failed to declare meeting with firm that subsequently won £85m Covid contract

According to explosive emails published by The Sunday Times, Health Minister Lord Bethell held a ‘private meeting’ with controversial Covid testing firm Abingdon Health on 1 April 2020 without disclosing this meeting in its transparency...

Update: Political advertising

The use of public money to advertise the party political purposes of the Government is a continuing source of concern to Good Law Project. As you will remember we wrote to Government in connection with...

Update from Court – The Bell v Tavistock appeal

Over the last two days, the Court of Appeal has heard submissions in relation to the decision made by the High Court in December regarding the ability of children under 16 with gender dysphoria to...

Yesterday’s Court hearing

We are pleased to report that the High Court has ordered the Government to pay 75% of our costs in our successful legal challenge against Michael Gove for the unlawful award of a contract to...

Should the law require Government to appoint based on merit?

It’s been a while since you heard from us in our ‘Jobs for the Boys’ case so we wanted to give you an update. As you’ll remember, the case focused on the appointments of Dido...

Government publishes 40 PPE contracts totalling £4.2bn – a year late

In February, Boris Johnson falsely claimed that details of all PPE contracts awarded by the Government had been published and “were on the record“. A few weeks later Cabinet Office Minister Edward Argar doubled down on...

Ruling threatens young people’s right to make decisions about their own health care

We have filed our intervention to the Court of Appeal arguing that transgender teenagers should be able to consent to treatment the same way teenagers with other medical conditions can.  The intervention is backed by a...

EXCLUSIVE: Six more VIP-lane companies revealed

Good Law Project is now able to reveal the names of six more companies awarded PPE contracts through the controversial’ VIP’ fast-track lane for associates of ministers and advisers. These six firms landed nearly half...

We’re growing our Legal Team

Good Law Project always wants to speak to practising solicitors, qualified anywhere in the United Kingdom, who might like to work for us.  We particularly want to hear from anyone who (1) is an experienced public...

Handing out peerages

Peter – or Baron, as for now we must call him – Cruddas was once a Treasurer of the Conservative Party. In March 2012 the Sunday Times published a rather mean piece about him which included...

High Court rules: Gove broke the law

Michael Gove broke the law by giving a contract to a communications agency run by long time associates of him and Dominic Cummings, the High Court has decided. The Court found that the decision to award...

Pork Barrel Politics – we have filed our claim

The evidence Government is using public money to meet its own ends is hard to ignore. The latest on the Towns Fund makes for depressing reading, with 22 of 26 places that received funds in the...

Government’s deceitful and bullying attempt to target a critic

Over the weekend the Mail on Sunday reported, quite explicitly, that our founder, Jo Maugham, is being “targeted by Ministers”. What is suggested is that Good Law Project is somehow “abusing” crowdfunding. But no evidence...

We will always act as our consciences require

Very early on in Good Law Project’s life we wrestled with what it meant for it to take a stand on ‘controversial’ issues. Might it weaken the financial strength of the organisation? Impede its ability...

Patel, Mirza and the Middlemen

Government’s position has consistently been that Ministers had no role in PPE procurement decisions. That, as we show below, is just not true. Good Law Project has evidence that Ministers – Cabinet Ministers – and...