More cronyism in the government's response to COVID

[Fambo Number Mive]

Dominic Cummings personally called a former colleague on the Vote Leave Brexit campaign and asked if his company would work for the government on its response to the Covid pandemic, leading to the award of a £580,000 Cabinet Office contract with no competitive process.

In an email on 20 March 2020, Boris Johnson's former chief adviser asked the most senior civil servant responsible for contracts to sign off the budget immediately, and that if "anybody in CABOFF [the Cabinet Office] whines", to tell them Cummings had "ordered it" from the prime minister.

The company, Hanbury Strategy, was founded by Paul Stephenson shortly after the 2016 Brexit referendum, during which he worked alongside Cummings as the Vote Leave director of communications. Hanbury also worked for the Conservative party on the 2019 general election
campaign, with Cummings and Ben Warner, a data specialist who worked for Vote Leave before becoming an adviser at No 10...

A witness statement by Cummings and other documents including internal Cabinet Office emails were made public at a court hearing last Friday. They show that concerns were expressed among civil servants that some work Hanbury did with public money, such as polling opinion on opposition politicians, including the Labour party leader, Keir Starmer, and Sadiq Khan, the Labour mayor of London, was carried out for the political advantage of the Conservative party.

On 26 May 2020, a Cabinet Office official emailed a colleague saying: "Hanbury measures attitudes towards political figures, which they shouldn't do using government money, but they've been asked to and it's a battle that I think is hard to fight."

Cummings said in his witness statement that "my expert opinion" was that Hanbury would provide world-class polling work, and was the only firm who could do what was needed, start immediately and "we can trust to give their all and be honest"...

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/jul/29/vote-leave-chief-awarded-580k-covid-deal-after-call-from-dominic-cummings

It's all one big circle jerk isn't it?