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Good news on our procurement judicial reviews

24th November 2020

To bring judicial review proceedings you have to establish you have an arguable case. Courts have, in recent times, interpreted this as imposing a relatively high bar for judicial review proceedings; think of it as being shortlisted for a job. And if they think you cross that bar they give you ‘permission’.

We have now heard – in relation to two different sets of claims – that the High Court thinks our claims are arguable. Some weeks back we heard the Court had given us permission to bring our systemic challenge to the Government’s continuing breach of its transparency obligations. And last week we heard that it had also given Good Law Project and EveryDoctor permission to bring our challenge against its decision to award contracts to Pestfix, Ayanda, and Clandeboye

This means that we are also very likely to be given permission to bring our challenges to the decision to award lucrative contracts without any tendering to long-time associates of Michael Gove and Dominic Cummings. And to the decision to award contracts to Abingdon Health and Saiger

Now the Government will have to come clean about what really happened.

The Court gave us permission on some – but not all – of our grounds of complaint. So we have asked the Court for a short oral hearing in which we will make the case to be given permission on the others. That hearing will take place on Thursday, 3rd December.

Meanwhile, we have brought a further five challenges to other contracts that Government gave to VIP-channelled pest control specialist Pestfix. You can read the bundle here and contribute to our crowdfunder here.


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