The U.K. government did not show “apparent bias” in awarding a key COVID-19 communications contract to a consultancy with links to Dominic Cummings, the Court of Appeal has ruled.
Campaign group the Good Law Project had previously challenged the emergency, no-competition award of £564,393 of work to comms agency Public First in June 2020.
Public First, co-founded by Conservative manifesto author and former government adviser Rachel Wolf, carried out focus groups and research into key slogans used by the government including “Stay at home, protect the NHS, save lives.”
In an earlier ruling, High Court judge Justice O’Farrell had found that, by failing to consider any other research agency for the job, a “fair-minded and informed observer” would conclude a “real possibility, or a real danger, that the decision-maker was biased.”
But that verdict was quashed Tuesday by the appeal court, with Lord Chief Justice Lord Burnett accepting that ministers were facing “a situation of extreme urgency” and finding that only one other research agency would have been in a position to complete the work to the tight timeframe expected by government.
Public First was, the court found, “trusted and known to be capable of undertaking the required services speedily and effectively.” The judge also found that there was “nothing unlawful in the involvement” of Cummings, then-Boris Johnson’s most senior aide and a former colleague of Wolf, in the contract process.
Jo Maugham, director of the Good Law Project, said the legal campaign group would be taking the case to the Supreme Court.
He said in a statement: “We haven’t lost a case in court since 2019. But you don’t win everything forever — especially when you are fighting the most difficult cases in the most difficult terrain.”
“That having been said, we do think the Court of Appeal has got it wrong. We think it is very important that the public purse be protected from decisions that favour the friends of those holding the strings. We’ll be asking the Supreme Court to hear our case.”
Tweeting in response to the finding, Cummings hailed a “total vindication for my decisions on moving super speedy on procurement to save lives.”
James Frayne, founding partner of Public First, said his agency’s team had “worked unbelievably hard for 7 days a week – from early morning till late at night — during the height of the pandemic, helping refine messages that prevented many casualties.”
“Today’s judgement rightly pays tribute to the team’s efforts and they should be proud of their work,” he added.
English (US) ·