High Court finding shows Johnson misled Parliament over Covid contracts

BORIS Johnson appears to have misled Parliament over the publication of coronavirus contracts, according to a court order.

The Prime Minister said that contracts relating to the pandemic, which have been challenged in court and are at the centre of cronyism allegations, were “there on the record for everybody to see”.

However, a final court order handed down by the High Court yesterday says that only “608 out of 708 relevant contracts” have been published by the UK Government.

The order comes after the court ruled that Health Secretary Matt Hancock acted unlawfully by awarding contracts without publishing the details within a stipulated time.

A case over the contract awards was brought by the Good Law Project against the Department for

Health and Social Care (DHSC) for its “wholesale failure” to disclose details of contracts agreed during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The DHSC is required by law to publish a “contract award notice” within 30 days of the award of any

contract for public goods or services worth more than £120,000.

At a hearing last month, the Good Law Project argued there had been a “dismal” failure by the DHSC to comply with the obligation.

It also claimed the Government was breaching its own transparency policy, which requires the publication of details of public contracts worth more than

£10,000.

In a ruling in February, Mr Justice Chamberlain said that “in a substantial number of cases, the Secretary of State [Health Secretary Matt Hancock] breached his legal obligation to publish contract award notices within 30 days of the award of contracts”.

He added: “There is also no dispute that the Secretary of State failed to publish redacted contracts in accordance with the transparency policy.”

In a further ruling yesterday, he said: “The defendant has published 608 out of 708 relevant contracts for supplies and services relating to Covid-19 awarded on or before October 7, 2020.

“In some or all of these cases, the defendant acted unlawfully by failing to publish the contracts within the period set out in the [transparency policy].

“The Secretary of State has now produced what he says are the correct figures showing the extent of compliance with [the 30-day requirement] but cannot produce equivalent figures for compliance with the transparency policy.”

He said the Good Law Project “complains about the omission of these latter figures and notes that 100 contracts still appear to be outstanding on Contracts Finder, nearly five months after the claim was issued”.

Mr Justice Chamberlain said the situation the DHSC faced in the first months of the pandemic was “unprecedented”, when “large quantities of goods and services had to be procured in very short timescales”.

The judge said it was “understandable that attention was focused on procuring what was thought necessary to save lives” but he added that the DHSC’S “historic failure” to comply with the obligations to publish contracts because of the difficulties caused by the pandemic was “an excuse, not a justification”.

Mr Justice Chamberlain ordered the DHSC to pay £85,000 towards the Good Law Project’s costs.

Legal director of the Good Law Project, Gemma Abbott, said: “The Government has not only misled Parliament and placed inaccurate information before the court, it has misled the country. We have a Government, and a Prime Minister, contemptuous of transparency and apparently allergic to accountability. The very least that the public deserves now is the truth.”

A Government spokesman said: “We are committed to publishing all contracts and to date have published 99% of these in the Official Journal of the EU and we are working to publish outstanding contracts as soon as possible.”