Cases

It’s more than a year since we teamed up with a cross-party group of MPs to submit a complaint about the climate-sceptic charity the Global Warming Policy Foundation. But the Charity Commission has sat on its hands. We’re taking legal action.   

In early March 2024, Ofcom suggested that the rightwing broadcaster GB News doesn’t have to meet the same impartiality standards as broadcasters with a bigger audience. But we think this two-tier approach is unlawful.

Climate crisis protester is the first to have been sentenced with jail time for the controversial new Section 7 offence. We funded his bail application and will support him to appeal this draconian sentence.

When Dr Aseem Malhotra spread covid vaccine scares, the General Medical Council refused to investigate. Now we’re helping a doctor make sure the regulator does its job.

Together with Dale Vince, founder of Ecotricity, we are launching a legal challenge against HMRC to close the £600m ‘carried interest’ loophole in tax paid by private equity fund managers.

Who pulls the strings of the shady groups at 55 Tufton Street? We’ve started a legal campaign to uncover this insidious network of think-tanks and lobby groups that influence our politics – and to expose who’s behind them.

Government Ministers have been using private email accounts to conduct official business. This was the case throughout the pandemic, when Boris Johnson and others were making important, costly decisions. So far our legal action to challenge the practice hasn’t succeeded, but we’re not giving up. We’re now seeking an appeal hearing in the Supreme Court.

We can’t let the drive for Net Zero become another place for secretive closed-door procurement practices. We challenged an enormous contract awarded to a suspiciously small company. After our legal action, the contract was dropped.

We issued a judicial review after the then Culture Secretary announced he would take his “war on woke” to the appointment of the new chair of the Charity Commission. When the new chair was appointed, we revealed information about his history that led to his withdrawal from the position.

The Covid testing lab Immensa, based in the West Midlands, told tens of thousands of people that they had tested negative for Covid – when they had in fact tested positive. This led to dozens of deaths. We challenged the awarding of the contract and failure by the Government to ensure the lab met basic standards.

We’re taking legal action against the awarding of a £22.6m PPE contract to Bunzl Healthcare, a client of a close associate of the Conservative health minister Lord Bethell. The contract was awarded with no competition.

Boris Johnson hijacked a Downing Street press conference – paid for by the British taxpayer and intended to provide the public with a vital COVID-19 update – to attack one of his political opponents.

A firm linked to Samir Jassal, a two-time Conservative Party parliamentary candidate and former councillor, was awarded a £102.6 million Government PPE contract without any competition in July last year. It was only after our lawyers wrote to Government in March this year to ask about Pharmaceuticals Direct that this contract was disclosed, long after Boris Johnson had insisted all contract details were on record.

In every corner of public life, the Tories are or look to be bending the resources of the state to their own private advantage.

Leaked documents revealed that ‘Operation Moonshot’, the Government’s plan to increase its Coronavirus testing programme, was based on technology that didn’t even exist yet – and would cost over £100 billion. But, in March 2021, the courts refused permission for a judicial review.

In 1539, Henry VIII gained the right to legislate by decree, enabling him to bypass Parliament altogether. And now Boris Johnson, the man who has already tried and failed to suspend Parliament, is taking further cues on democracy from a Tudor King.