Gove used Covid research to test attitudes on Union
SNP demands inquiry over the ‘misuse of public funds’
UK ministers used a pandemic research contract deemed “unlawful” by the High Court to carry out work on attitudes to the Union in Scotland, The Herald can reveal.
Court documents show an urgent request to test attitudes to the Union was made by the office of Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove – under the cover of the Covid-19 contract given to Public First, which was meant to inform “vital” advice to shape the UK Government’s pandemic response.
It has emerged that in July last year, services provided by Public First under a £560,000 Covid pandemic contract were extended to cover what was described as “qualitative research into EU exit topics and themes, rebuilding the economy following the Covid-19 crisis and attitudes to the UK Union”.
The SNP has now called for an inquiry into what it called “misuse of public funds” by Tory ministers on conducting “political research” through the Covid contract.
The UK Government said it maintains that it is allowed to undertake polling work on government policy issues.
Dominic Cummings last week defended the decision to appoint Public First which he had links to, insisting he was acting in the midst of a “once in a century” health crisis.
The Prime Minister’s former aide said the decision to appoint firms such as Public First during the pandemic without a proper procurement process was done to focus on the “imminent threat” of Covid rather than create a “Potemkin paper trail”.
According to the judgment, the award of the contract was made by a letter from Mr Gove dated June 5.
High Court judge Mrs Justice O’farrell ruled that the June 5 decision to award the contract to Public First – run by close allies of Mr Gove and Mr Cummings – “gave rise to apparent bias and was unlawful”.
The judge said a failure to consider other firms could be seen as suggesting a “real danger” of bias. Public First is run by husbandand-wife policy specialists James Frayne and Rachel Wolf, both of whom previously worked with Mr Cummings and Mr Gove.
The Good Law Project, which brought the legal challenge against Mr Gove, says the services commissioned in the contract “significantly exceeded” the scope of Covid-19 communications.
Papers reveal that the contract was extended to cover research into EU exit topics, rebuilding the economy following the Covid-19 crisis and attitudes to the Union.
One spend of £98,000 in August last year covered 11 sets of focus groups in July across the UK, including Edinburgh, Glasgow, Inverness and the Highlands and related to the Government’s postcovid economic renewal work and matters relating to the Union.
SNP Westminster deputy leader Kirsten Oswald MP said: “It is a scandal that in the midst of a
deadly pandemic, Tory ministers were misusing emergency Covid-19 contracts for constitutional campaigning.
“This is a gross misuse of public money and emergency Covid contracts, which existed to tackle the pandemic. There must be an inquiry and those responsible must be held to account. This Tory government is engulfed in cronyism.”
Catherine Hunt, head of insight and evaluation for the Prime Minister’s Office and Cabinet Office communication team, has detailed how Mr Gove’s office had requested Unionrelated research, which they did contracts for separately – and included it within the Covid-19 research.
She states in written evidence that testing the strength of the Union initially came out of an urgent new government narrative research and testing brief which began in January 2020.
It came after a briefing with Alex Aiken, executive director for government communications, who was responsible for strategy.
She said the narrative would be “very important in setting out its main policies and over-arching vision” for the longer-term, informing its overall communication strategy.
At the same time, she had been conducting research for Lee Cain, the cabinet office’s director of communications on the Union, and sharing details with Mr Gove.
She says she told Mr Gove’s office on January 28 last year that they were working with Public First to do “narrative testing”.
In one instant message exchange the same month, she said to a colleague: “I’m in the middle of a separate email to Alex now about the Public First research.
“Tory party research agency tests Tory party narrative on public money. But actually, it will be very interesting and very good.”
She has said in court papers that it was “meant to be frivolous and light-hearted.”
She acknowledged that there was no senior person within the Government Communication Service (GCS) with overall responsibility for overseeing contract and payment process and there was a “lack of clarity” about who was expected to make a decision on how Public First would be paid, including contractual arrangements.
“In my view and experience, the lack of clarity around finance and budgeting processes was symptomatic of wider administrative issues within GCS at this point,” she said. “Processes and responsibilities for budgeting, procurement, contracts, team management and hiring and commercial and human resources issues were – from my perspective – generally opaque, confused or not in place. This caused me a huge amount of frustration at the time, leading to delays and confusion.”
In an email dated June 25, 2020, she indicated that Public First could be instructed under the pandemic contract for “policy testing other than Covid-19 related health communications”.
And she has said that at the start of July she said she received an “urgent request” for Union-related research from the office of Mr Gove.
Just three months earlier, the government had been advised that research into the exit from the EU could not be carried out as part of the Covid-19 contract.
Mrs Justice O’farrell, who gave the ruling on the Cabinet Office contract with Public First, said: “The decision of 5 June 2020 to award the contract to Public First gave rise to apparent bias and was unlawful.”
The Cabinet Office has rejected calls for an investigation after the judgment, arguing that Mr Gove “was not involved in the decision to award this contract”.
A Cabinet Office spokesperson said: “We welcome the court’s ruling that we were entitled to award the contract on grounds of extreme urgency in response to an unprecedented global pandemic.
“Procedural issues raised in this judgment have already been addressed through the implementation of the independent Boardman review of procurement processes.”
A Public First spokesman said the company was “deeply proud of the work we did in the early stages of the pandemic, which helped save lives”.
He added: “The judge rejected most of the Good Law Project’s claims, not finding actual bias in the awarding of this work, nor any problems with the pace or scale of the award.”
This Tory government is engulfed in cronyism