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In April, Government announced that they supported the creation of the UK Rapid Test Consortium (UK-RTC). The idea was that the companies and institutions involved would create a rapid antibody test. On 2nd June, Government awarded a contract worth £10 million to Abingdon Health for the materials needed to produce the test. On 14th August, they handed Abingdon Health another contract worth a staggering £75 million.
Despite these huge sums of money, Government seems to have ignored widely held concerns that tests were not fit for purpose. So a £75million contract was awarded without competition, on the basis of profoundly flawed research. And when confronted with evidence of these flaws Government tried to suppress publication of that evidence.
These are serious charges and we have set out the publicly available evidence in this chronology, which we will update as more evidence is published.
To protect public money and to seek to encourage Government towards honesty, we have issued judicial review proceedings in respect of the Abingdon Health contract awards. Our case rests on the following grounds:
1. Government’s apparent failure to conduct any lawful or sufficient inquiry or evaluation of the accuracy of the rapid antibody tests.
2. The award of these contracts seemingly without any advertisement or competition between bidders.
Good Law Project has instructed Joseph Barrett of 11KBW Chambers and Rook Irwin Sweeney. They will work considerably below market rates.
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