£14.7BN WASTED BY JOHNSON’S TORIES

Analysis lays bare true cost of Government’s dodgy dealings

Whitehall Correspondent

THE Government has blown £14.7BILLION of public money on “wasteful projects, crony contracts and duff deals”.

Analysis based on official figures claims around £3.6bn in public contracts has been handed to firms linked to individuals in Government or the Conservative Party since Boris Johnson became Prime Minister.

And in the same period, the Best for Britain campaign group said a further £11.1bn had been “spent wastefully or funded government excess”.

Examples it gives include £73,000 spent stocking the Westminster wine cellar, and a £30million Covid test vials contract awarded to a firm run by the landlord of Matt Hancock’s local pub without a proper tendering process.

It also includes a £122m deal for medical gowns that failed safety standards. The £14.7bn could have paid the combined salaries of 60,000 nurses, 65,000 teachers and

77,000 police over the twoand-a-half years since

Johnson took charge. Naomi Smith, chief of independent Best for Britain, said: “It is easy to become numb to the extreme scale and frequency of this Government’s cosy deals with friends, and wasteful spending on useless products.

“While raising taxes on working people and cutting support for those most in need, it’s outrageous they are spending eye-watering sums enriching their mates, living the high life and buying junk.”

A staggering £900,000 of taxpayers’ money was spent painting the PM’s plane, on top of £100,000 decorating No.10 with works of art bought through the Government Art Collection fund.

Last March it was revealed the Government spends more than £500,000 a year ferrying ministerial papers around Whitehall in chauffeur-driven cars.

In February, the Tories approved spending up to £600,000 in legal fees defending its decision to award a Covid-19 opinion polling contract to Public First, run by associates of Michael Gove and Dominic Cummings.

The contract itself was worth £840,000 and was not put out to competitive tender.

The same goes for a further £580,000 of political polling by Hanbury Strategy, which is also run by associates of Mr Cummings. Best for Britain says “duff deals” also include £10bn for the NHS Test and Trace programme – an amount described as “astonishing” by Chris Ham, former chief of the King’s Fund health think-tank.

Then there was a raft of contracts handed to firms with links to the Tory Party, MPs or ministers. A £2.1m school technology deal in October 2020 went to Specialist Computer Centres, which is owned by the Rigby Group. It has donated a total of £105,000 to Conservative coffers since 2017.

Meller Designs, co-owned by a party donor at the time, got £160m to provide PPE without competitive tender. It later emerged the firm was referred to the “VIP lane” for contracts by Mr Gove, who boss David Meller had donated cash to.

A Government spokesman said: “All contracts awarded during the pandemic were done so in line with procurement regulations and all government spending is routinely published, ensuring value for money for hard-working taxpayers and full transparency for scrutiny.”