Tory Cabinet Minister Michael Gove broke the law, the High Court has ruled, by acting with “apparent bias’ in the handing of a £560,000 public contract to long-time associates of his and Dominic Cummings.
Transparency campaigners took legal action against Gove’s Cabinet Office department over the decision to pay more than £500,000 of taxpayers’ money to market research firm Public First at the start of the coronavirus crisis in March 2020, and questioned the involvement of Cummings.
Lawyers representing the Good Law Project said Cummings then Boris Johnson’s chief adviser, wanted focus group work to be given to a company whose bosses were his friends.
Ministers have always claimed there was no favouritism - bias as lawyers call it - in the awarding of vast public contracts during the COVID pandemic.
However, the judge in the High Court case found “the existence of personal connections between the Defendant ( Michael Gove ), Mr Cummings and the directors of Public First was a relevant circumstance that might be perceived to compromise their impartiality and independence in the context of a public procurement.”
The judge continued: “failure to consider any other research agency...would lead a fair minded and informed observer to conclude that there was a real possibility, or a real danger, that the decision maker was biased”.
Gove had tried to argue that only Public First could carry out the contracted work and everyone was acting under pressure.
However, the High Court found that version of events “does not stand up to scrutiny” and “the time constraints...did not exonerate the Defendant from conducting the procurement so as to demonstrate a fair and impartial process of selection”.
Emails between civil servants revealed in the legal action revealed both Michael Gove and No 10 wanted contracts to be awarded to Public First.
The Good Law project claimed that the Cabinet Office did not even consider whether to give the contract to anyone else.
Jo Maugham, Director of Good Law Project said: “This is not Government for the public good, it is Government for the good of friends of the Conservative Party.
“We just don’t understand how the Prime Minister can run a Cabinet that acts without proper regard for the law or value for public money. Government has claimed there was no favouritism in the awarding of contracts. But the High Court has held an informed observer would conclude otherwise.”
The outcome is the second decision in Good Law Project’s slate of crowdfunded procurement judicial reviews.
Two Cabinet Ministers - Michael Gove and Health Secretary Matt Hancock have now been found to have broken the law.
