The Covid inquiry is taking us back again to the dysfunctional and corrupt behaviour of the Tory government under Boris Johnson. Its hearings also coincide with the fifth anniversary of the start of the pandemic, and Boris Johnson announcing the lockdown on 23 March 2020.
The anniversary has also been marked by the Covid-19 Bereaved Families For Justice Group. The group has written to the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, urging her not to go ahead with her proposed plan to cut disability payments. The letter states, “Disabled people were 11 times more likely to die from Covid-19 than non-disabled people. Instead of addressing the inequalities that contributed to that horrifying statistic, the government is pushing ahead with plans to slash disability benefits”.
Controversy resurfaced at the inquiry as it resumed its work on 3 March with Module Five which aims to analyse the procurement of personal protective equipment (PPE), Covid tests and ventilators when the country was struck by the global coronavirus epidemicback in March 2020.
The VIP lane legal challenge
At the heart of this was the VIP lane. Government use of the VIP lane was challenged in January 2022 by campaign groups the Good Law Project and EveryDoctor which argued the bid process conferred unlawful preferential treatment on those with political connections.
They took legal action over more than £340mn in contracts awarded in 2020 to pest control firm PestFix and a contract worth around £252mn to the hedge fund Ayanda Capital.
The High Court ruled the use of the VIP lane was illegal.
Preferential treatment for Dyson
One expert report for the inquiry by Professor Sanchez-Graells reveals the true extent of Conservative party grandee and former Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove’s role in ensuring James Dyson was awarded a contract to provide 10,000 ventilators as part of the “Ventilator Challenge”.
He received “preferential treatment” in the awarding of a government contract to his company for 10,000 ventilators during the pandemic, in an “affront” to normal procurement rules, the report found.
“Dyson benefitted from preferential treatment” because Michael Gove, the former Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, issued “an instruction” to place an order for 10,000 ventilators from Dyson in March 2020. According to the government chief commercial officer, Gove was “insistent that an order be placed”.
Gove now edits The Spectator but during the pandemic he was Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Office and gave evidence on 10 March to the inquiry as it continued its investigation into procurement. Michael Gove hit out at the Good Law Project. He said, “I have a very low opinion of the Good Law Project. I believe that its title is an almost perfect oxymoron. The man who runs it is a politically motivated grifter”.
Mone and Barrowman’s late bid rejected
Baroness Michelle Mone and her husband Doug Barrowman also made a brazen last-minute bid to be core participants in this module – a legal status which also gives the right to make statements and apply to ask questions of witnesses.
PPE Medpro, led by Barrowman, was awarded government contracts worth more than £200mn during Covid after Baroness Mone recommended the firm to ministers.
The bid to be core participants was rejected by the inquiry’s chair, Baroness Hallett.
However, the Covid inquiry ruled it would hear in private, detailed evidence about the multimillion-pound PPE contracts awarded, the inquiry chair has ruled.
PPE contracts evidence heard in closed session
The National Crime Agency (NCA) has since May 2021 been investigating potential criminal offences committed in the procurement of the contracts awarded to the company, PPE Medpro, and argued that its investigation could be prejudiced if the inquiry heard evidence in public.
Hallett rejected the NCA’s application for PPE Medpro to be excluded from the inquiry, and ruled instead that the evidence would be heard in a closed session, attended by a maximum of five journalists, with the evidence only to be made public at the end of any possible criminal proceedings.
This closed session took place on Thursday 20 March. Baroness Hallett heard evidence from the Cabinet Office and the Department of Health and Social Care witnesses about PPE Medpro. The public could not attend these proceedings and there was not the usual broadcast on YouTube and publication of a transcript. Only core participants and selected journalists were able to attend.
Concern about the scope of the inquiry
Bereaved families have accused the Covid inquiry of “protecting” PPE suppliers from public scrutiny after saying it did not need to hear evidence from them to “investigate this issue thoroughly”.
It argued that it did not need to hear evidence from suppliers as “its focus is on how the government responded to suppliers’ offers”.
Naomi Fulop, from the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK group, called it an “inexplicable decision to protect these corporations from public scrutiny”.
She said it “smacks of a potential whitewash” and that it made “achieving real justice for the Covid-19 bereaved families less likely”.
“While thousands died during the pandemic, suppliers of PPE were using government contacts to line their pockets”, Fulop said. “The inquiry must hear from those suppliers directly. This might be the only chance we have to uncover the true extent of the corruption and profiteering that happened during the pandemic – the inquiry owes it to the bereaved families not to waste that chance.”
A version of this article was first published in Media North: Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom (North). For more from Media North, and to subscribe to their newsletter, visit their website.During the Festival of Debate, Media North will have a free online event on Thursday 8 May from 6pm–7.30pm Framed: The Demonisation of Disability.
