Covid inquiry: Maugham hits back at Gove

The executive director of Good Law Project, Jo Maugham, has described Michael Gove in sworn evidence as a “deliberate and disgraceful liar”.

During the pandemic, the former minister was at the heart of the Tories’ VIP lane, which Good Law Project established was “unlawful” in a 2022 High Court case. And he was involved in many of the most controversial deals concluded under that lane including the £679m of contracts handed to Unispace after Gove spoke with the company’s founder on the phone and then promised via email “we will follow up!”.

It was Gove who helped the fashion company Meller Designs – a firm co-owned by a man who supported his bid to become Tory leader in 2016 – bag contracts worth £163m. And it was Gove to whom Michelle Mone wrote – on his private email address – before PPE Medpro landed contracts which are now subject to investigation by the National Crime Agency. 

So when the Covid inquiry called the former minister as a witness on 10 March, Gove was immediately under pressure.

Counsel to the inquiry, Richard Wald KC, began his questioning by asking if the former minister agreed that it was important for the government to achieve “fairness and transparency” when awarding contracts, even in an emergency. Instead of answering directly, Gove took time out to mount a personal attack on Good Law Project’s executive director, Jo Maugham.

“I have a very low opinion of the Good Law Project,” Gove said. “I believe that its title is an almost perfect oxymoron. The man who runs it is a politically motivated grifter.”

Wald pushed back immediately, clarifying that “It wasn’t a question I was asking you, but you’ve said your piece,” and went on to examine the former minister’s role in supporting bids to provide medical equipment from James Dyson and David Meller.

But hours later, the Spectator – a rightwing magazine edited by Michael Gove – published a diary column describing the former minister’s insult as the “best moment” of the day’s proceedings under the gleeful headline “Michael Gove takes aim at Jolyon Maugham”.

In a witness statement to the inquiry, Maugham has now responded, arguing that Gove’s remarks at the inquiry were “taking advantage of – I would say conspicuously abusing – the privileged status of evidence before the Inquiry to make highly defamatory remarks with the intention of being able to report them in the Spectator, a magazine that he edits, without being sued”.

Maugham said:

“It is a matter of public record, and I repeat it with a statement of truth with the potential consequences that properly entails, that I draw a salary no higher than that of a backbench MP and derive no other remuneration from my work at Good Law Project. My salary from Good Law Project is a tiny percentage of what I earned when I left the bar to set up and work for a non-profit and for the first years of Good Law Project’s existence I did not even draw a salary.”

“Gove’s statement is flatly untrue,” Maugham said, adding “he is a deliberate and disgraceful liar.”