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Case Update

The PPE Fiasco

6th July 2020

More details of PPE fiasco that left hundreds of doctors and nurses dead are starting to emerge.

Whilst our EU partners were putting together emergency procurement arrangements in late January, it wasn’t until March that Government put together an emergency scheme to protect our doctors and nurses and care workers.

By then the global market for PPE had tightened considerably and Government was having to play catch up – ditching the normal rules that secure good value for public money and which guard against corruption in the process. On 27 March Government opened its portal inviting tenders for PPE on the gov.uk website and received 24,000 offers from 16,000 suppliers.  It has spent – and this is the Treasury’s own figure – a staggering £15 billion​. And, surprisingly, three of the biggest beneficiaries were companies specialising in pest control, a confectionery wholesaler and an opaque private fund owned through a tax haven.

Why? We do not know. And Government is not helping – it has ignored the usual rule that contracts should be published within 20 days.

But Good Law Project, working with EveryDoctor, means to find out. Our intention is to pursue judicial review claims in respect of the Pestfix, Clandeboye and Ayanda contracts. But we will keep these contracts under review – and we may substitute others if better examples emerge.

Litigation of this scale and importance is undeniably difficult and expensive. If you are able to support the legal challenge, you can do so here.

You can sign the petition to demand the Government publishes the PPE contracts here.

Good Law Project and EveryDoctor has instructed Rook Irwin Sweeney in this case.


It is only with your support that we can continue to hold Government to account. If you would like to make a donation, you can do so here.

Case

This article is part of our Scrutinising PPE Procurement case

This legal campaign helped draw wide attention to the institutionalisation of cronyism in the VIP lane.
The Court found that the VIP lane, through which Ayanda and Pestfix, won their contracts, was illegal.

See more about this case