Michael Gove Broke The Law

Despite the Government trying to do everything they can to discredit the Good Law Project, today they have won their case in the High Court against Michael Gove.
Good Law Project

Dear Jane,

Michael Gove broke the law by giving a contract to a communications agency run by long time associates of him and Dominic Cummings, the High Court has decided.

The Court found that the decision to award the £560,000 contract to Public First was tainted by “apparent bias” and was unlawful. The Court found that Gove’s:

“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” (paragraph 168).

Michael Gove had claimed that the work was such that only Public First could carry it out. However, the High Court rejected that version of events. The simple truth, it held, was that the Cabinet Office didn’t even consider whether anyone else should have the contract.

The decision vindicates Good Law Project’s long-running characterisation of pandemic procurement as “institutionalised cronyism”.

Emails released in the case also showed that both Michael Gove and Number 10 were keen that Public First (and Hanbury) should win no-tender polling contracts. Good Law Project’s judicial review of the decision to award a contract to Hanbury will be heard on 26 July.

The decision is the second in our long slate of crowdfunded procurement judicial reviews – and we have succeeded in both. Two Cabinet Ministers – Michael Gove and Matt Hancock – have now been found to have broken the law.

Following the first decision, Good Law Project wrote to Matt Hancock making proposals to improve procurement and get better value for money for taxpayers. We offered, if that invitation was accepted, to drop our further procurement challenges to save public money. Mr Hancock did not respond. Since that letter, huge further sums in public money have been wasted in fruitless defence of unlawful conduct.

Good Law Project repeats its invitation to the Government to learn lessons – and to stop wasting more public money staving off political embarrassment.

Good Law Project is grateful to its legal team of Jason Coppel QC and Patrick Halliday of 11KBW Chambers, instructed by Rook Irwin Sweeney. And of course to the tens of thousands of people whose financial contributions make litigation like this possible.

We are the arrow but you draw the bow.

Thank you,

Jo Maugham
Director of Good Law Project

Watch this space to see what happens in the case against Matt Hancock.

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Do you know how this will impact on Michael Gove?

The impact will be the square root of feck all probably.

I absolutely support GLP (and have crowdfunded them) and there is almost no other scrutiny of the government at the moment but the victory would be more meaningful if there was some sanction which flowed from the judgement.

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No criminal record for corruption? crime of misuse of public money? I’m not a lawyer but couldn’t the barristers request a conviction of the named person?

You’re not expecting one part of the establishment to take another part of the establishment to task re you?

Yes.
What else is a judicial review for?

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A law or two might be changed. A new law or two might be put into the books. A suitably apologetic spokesbot will be wheeled in front of the cameras to say “Lessons have been learned” and the whole thing will be forgotten by the time the story is wrapping for a fish supper.

When Priti Patel recently found guilty of breaking ministerial code, the suggested solution is the change the code rather than the behaviour. Says it all really

I think @anon88169868 sums up my expectations of change perfectly:

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This was not a judicial review, it was a case in the High Court.
The government has been doing its best to discredit Good Law Project by saying it is misusing clients funds, which Judges have not upheld. The Good Law Project is crowdfunded. they have even threatened Jolyon Maughan with reporting him to the Bar Standards Board.

so how can this situation be improved if there is no sanction?

no fine
no restitution
no being forced to resign from public office
and no criminal record for the individuals proven not to just have been responsible, but personally involved in corruption and misuse of public money?

He’s a mate of Boris, who has proved again and again he has no qualms about breaking the law.

This is the new normal :face_with_symbols_over_mouth:

This is what they meant by TAKING back control.

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Can’t stand Gove but this has to be viewed as a pretty vexatious action by Jolyon Maugham who is a long term Labour activist and anti-Brexit campaigner.
A lot of accounts I read seemed to suggest parts of the judgement saw what happened as a necessary means to an end in context of the situation.
Plus I had 20 odd years in local government procurement and the national procurement in Whitehall (not Westminster) was pretty dire.
Think there’s two sides to this as there often is…

I find it ridiculous that the govt abandoned its normal suppliers during this time instead buying from “friends” for vastly increased prices. Time and time again the normal suppliers have come forward suggesting they had stock of the required items but govt went elsewhere to a new untested supplier and paid significantly more for the items.

It just stinks of corruption to me and would be heavily critised by this govt if it were happening in another country.

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This :point_up_2: is why Jo Maugham is right and Steve wrong, because time and time again those new suppliers were chosen from the old chums network.

And?

I presume it’s only OK to fight for causes that you believe in if Steve happens to agree with them?

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Few pointless childish remarks there… the irony in all this is that the contracting has all been done in line with the EU Procurement Regulations too!

you’ll be introducing some evidence to back that up I suppose…
or is it just more of your anecdotal crap?

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Would you like to let us all know what these accounts were please?
As it happens we have experience of procurement at Westminster level and one of the main problems was, as with the appalling experiences with MOD procurement, that Ministers wanted things that were either not available or at a price which damaged their efficiency. If you said NO to the Minister as a civil servant, that was it, you were moved sideways and forget promotion.
Does it really matter what the politics are if someone is, for once, doing the right thing and standing up for what is right.
I heard Boris Johnson after his talk with President Biden, that the UK government respected the Rule of Law, but I see very little evidence of that. This from someone who was taken to the Supreme court for unlawfully proroguing Parliament.
It does appear that there are indeed two sides to this, the honest one and the one where its a free for all for chums and contributors to Tory Party funds.
For your information , both Paul Flinders and I support the Good Law Project and we are both very anti-Brexit, but that doesn’t affect our concern to see people in high places brought to book for their wrongdoing.

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Good Law Project
Dear Jane,

Yesterday’s High Court judgment that Michael Gove broke the law by handing a contract to his associates is vindication of what we have been saying for months: there is institutionalised cronyism at the heart of Government.

Lots of you have quite rightly got in touch to ask: what are the consequences? What happens now?

There will be real world impact. We know from people who work in Government that Good Law Project’s legal cases have caused those in power to think twice before they break the rules again. It shouldn’t take a tiny not-for-profit, crowdfunded by tens of thousands of people, to act as a watchdog against Government cronyism and law-breaking. But those in power have learned we’re watching and that we’re not afraid to act.

In terms of criminality, that was not alleged in this case. But we know that in the case of PPE procurement, Government’s own Counter Fraud Function has assessed a high risk of fraud. We have uncovered a case that we believe the Serious Fraud Office should investigate and we will make a referral to them. As always, we will keep you updated.

For the Ministers involved, breaking the law should be a resigning matter or a sackable offence. But we know that Michael Gove or Matt Hancock won’t go and the two High Court rulings won’t force them to. That’s a huge problem for all of us who believe in standards in public life and the rule of law.

So whilst the law is an important check on Government’s misuse of power, it can’t be the only one. In order to truly turn the tide on this culture of impunity, we need to be more ambitious. We need to reach more of the public with our work, we need to be on the front page of every paper, we need to be speaking with our friends and families about what is happening at the heart of Government. Ultimately, it’s about building more power.

It’s no easy task. But we’ve already shown what thousands of people can do when we’re all pulling together in the right direction. On that note, I wanted to share a personal thank you. This High Court victory is only possible thanks to you.

Thank you,

Jo Maugham
Director of Good Law Project
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